The
eye of the employer is often worth more than the hands of a dozen employees. In
the nature of things, an agent cannot be as faithful to his employer as to
himself. Many who are employers will call to mind instances where the best
employees have overlooked important points which could not have escaped their
own observation as a proprietor. No man has a right to expect to succeed in
life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business
thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.
A
man may be a manufacturer; he has got to learn the many details of his business
personally; he will learn something every day, and he will find he will make
mistakes nearly every day. And these very mistakes are helps to him in the way
of experiences if he but heeds them. He will be like the Yankee tin-peddler,
who, having been cheated as to quality in the purchase of his merchandise,
said: "All right, there's a little information to be gained every day; I
will never be cheated in that way again." Thus a man buys his experience,
and it is the best kind if not purchased at too dear a rate.
I
hold that every man should, like Cuvier, the French naturalist, thoroughly know
his business. So proficient was he in the study of natural history, that you
might bring to him the bone, or even a section of a bone of an animal which he
had never seen described, and, reasoning from analogy, he would be able to draw
a picture of the object from which the bone had been taken. On one occasion his
students attempted to deceive him. They rolled one of their members in a cow
skin and put him under the professor's table as a new specimen. When the
philosopher came into the room, some of the students asked him what animal it
was. Suddenly the animal said "I am the devil and I am going to eat
you." It was but natural that Cuvier should desire to classify this
creature, and examining it intently, he said:
"Divided
hoof; graminivorous! It cannot be done."
He
knew that an animal with a split hoof must live upon grass and grain, or other
kind of vegetation, and would not be inclined to eat flesh, dead or alive, so
he considered himself perfectly safe. The possession of a perfect knowledge of
your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.
Among
the maxims of the elder, Rothschild was one, an apparent paradox: "Be
cautions and bold." This seems to be a contradiction in terms, but it is
not, and there is great wisdom in the maxim. It is, in fact, a condensed
statement of what I have already said. It is to say, "You must exercise
your caution in laying your plans, but be bold in carrying them out." A man,
who is all caution, will never dare to take hold and be successful; and a man
who is all boldness, is merely reckless, and must eventually fail. A man may go
on "'change" and make fifty or one hundred thousand dollars in
speculating in stocks, at a single operation. But if he has simple boldness
without caution, it is mere chance, and what he gains to-day he will lose
to-morrow. You must have both the caution and the boldness, to insure success.
Rothschild
has another maxim: "Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or
place." That is to say, never have anything to do with a man or place
which never succeeds, because, although a man may appear to be honest and
intelligent, yet if he tries this or that and always fails, it is on account of
some fault or infirmity that you may not be able to discover but nevertheless
which must exist.
There
is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out
in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another
to-morrow, and so on, day after day. He may do so once in his life; but so far
as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it. "Like
causes produce like effects." If a man adopts the proper methods to be
successful, "luck" will not prevent him. If he does not succeed,
there are reasons for it, although, perhaps, he may not be able to see them.
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