“Your business must be an enormous one now, Sir Thomas, from the
stories in the English papers about the organization of your
enterprises into a limited company.”
“Yes, I have a good deal to attend to,” he said, smiling. “I have sixty
stores in London alone, and four hundred and twenty the world over,
most of them being in the British Isles. I sell all food products
except beef, which I have never handled. I own thousands of acres on
the island of Ceylon, where I am the largest individual land-owner. On
this land I grow tea, coffee and cocoa, and employ several thousand
natives to cultivate and ship it. I have warehouses all over Asia, and
branch stores in Hamburg and Berlin. In Chicago I have a packing-house
where I sometimes kill three thousand hogs in a day. So, you see, my
enterprises are pretty well scattered over the earth.
“How many employees have I? Well, all in all, I have somewhat over ten
thousand, and a nicer lot of employees you never saw. I have never
had a strike, and never expect to have one, for I make it my personal
duty to see that my men are all comfortably fixed. We live together in
perfect harmony.”
“And what advice would you give young men who are about to start out
for themselves, Sir Thomas?”
“That’s a broad question,” laughed the great man. “It would take me
some time to answer it properly. But, to begin with, I say that hard
work is the cardinal requisite for success. I always feel that I cannot
impress that fact too strongly upon young men. And then a person’s
heart and soul must be in his work. He must be earnest, above all, and
willing to give his whole time to his work, if necessary. Honesty,
it goes without saying, is necessary, and if you want to be wholly
successful, you must do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you don’t, they will be sure to retaliate, when you least expect it.
If young men would follow these rules, they would get along very well;
but few of them will. If your article can inspire any of them to harder
work, its mission will be blessed.”