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SUCCESS
BY LORD BEAVERBROOK
SECOND EDITION
LONDON STANLEY PAUL & CO 31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.2
_First published in November 1921_; _Reprinted November 1921_
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The contents of this volume originally appeared as weekly articles by
Lord Beaverbrook in the _Sunday Express_. They aroused so much interest,
and so many applications were received for copies of the various
articles, that it was decided to have them collected and printed in
volume form.
He who buys _Success_, reads and digests its precepts, will find this
inspiring volume a sure will-tonic. It will nerve him to be up and
doing. It will put such spring and go into him that he will make a
determined start on that road which, pursued with perseverance, leads
onwards and upwards to the desired goal--SUCCESS.
PREFACE
The articles embodied in this small book were written during the
pressure of many other affairs and without any idea that they would be
published as a consistent whole. It is, therefore, certain that the
critic will find in them instances of a repetition of the central idea.
This fact is really a proof of a unity of conception which justifies
their publication in a collected form. I set out to ask the question,
"What is success in the affairs of the world--how is it attained, and
how can it be enjoyed?" I have tried with all sincerity to answer the
question out of my own experience. In so doing I have strayed down many
avenues of inquiry, but all of them lead back to the central conception
of success as some kind of temple which satisfies the mind of the
ordinary practical man.
Other fields of mental satisfaction have been left entirely outside as
not germane to the inquiry.
I address myself to the young men of the new age. Those who have youth
also possess opportunity. There is in the British Empire to-day no bar
to success which resolution cannot break. The young clerk has the key of
success in his pocket, if he has the courage and the ability to turn the
lock which leads to the Temple of Success. The wide world of business
and finance is open to him. Any public dinner or meeting contains
hundreds of men who can succeed if they will only observe the rules
which govern achievement.
A career to-day is open to talent, for there is no heredity in finance,
commerce, or industry. The Succession and Death Duties are wiping out
those reserves by which old-fashioned banks and businesses warded off
from themselves for two or three generations the result of hereditary
incompetence. Ability is bound to be recognised from whatever source it
springs. The struggle in finance and commerce is too intense and the
battle too world-wide to prevent individual efficiency playing a bigger
and a better rôle.
If I have given encouragement to a single young man to set his feet on
the path which leads upwards to success, and warned him of a few of the
perils which will beset him on the road, I shall feel perfectly
satisfied that this book has not been written in vain.
BEAVERBROOK.
CONTENTS
I. SUCCESS
II. HAPPINESS: THREE SECRETS
III. LUCK
IV. MODERATION
V. MONEY
VI. EDUCATION
VII. ARROGANCE
VIII. COURAGE
IX. PANIC
X. DEPRESSION
XI. FAILURE
XII. CONSISTENCY
XIII. PREJUDICE
XIV. CALM
I
SUCCESS
Success--that is the royal road we all want to tread, for the echo off
its flagstones sounds pleasantly in the mind. It gives to man all that
the natural man desires: the opportunity of exercising his activities to
the full; the sense of power; the feeling that life is a slave, not a
master; the knowledge that some great industry has quickened into life
under the impulse of a single brain.
To each his own particular branch of this difficult art. The artist
knows one joy, the soldier another; what delights the business man
leaves the politician cold. But however much each section of society
abuses the ambitions or the morals of the other, all worship equally at
the same shrine. No man really wants to spend his whole life as a
reporter, a clerk, a subaltern, a private Member, or a curate. Downing
Street is as attractive as the oak-leaves of the field-marshal; York and
Canterbury as pleasant as a dominance in Lombard Street or Burlington
House.
For my own part I speak of the only field of success I know--the world
of ordinary affairs. And I start with a contradiction in terms. Success
is a constitutional temperament bestowed on the recipient by the gods.
And yet you may have all the gifts of the fairies and fail utterly. Man
cannot add an inch to his stature, but by taking thought he can walk
erect; all the gifts given at birth can be destroyed by a single curse.
Like all human affairs, success is partly a matter of predestination and
partly of free will. You cannot make the genius, but you can either
improve or destroy it, and most men and women possess the assets which
can be turned into success.
But those who possess the precious gifts will have both to hoard and to
expand them.
What are the qualities which make for success? They are three:
Judgment, Industry, and Health, and perhaps the greatest of these is
judgment. These are the three pillars which hold up the fabric of
success. But in using the word judgment one has said everything.
In the affairs of the world it is the supreme quality. How many men have
brilliant schemes and yet are quite unable to execute them, and through
their very brilliancy stumble unawares upon ruin? For round judgment
there cluster many hundred qualities, like the setting round a jewel:
the capacity to read the hearts of men; to draw an inexhaustible
fountain of wisdom from every particle of experience in the past, and
turn the current of this knowledge into the dynamic action of the
future. Genius goes to the heart of a matter like an arrow from a bow,
but judgment is the quality which learns from the world what the world
has to teach and then goes one better. Shelley had genius, but he would
not have been a success in Wall Street--though the poet showed a flash
of business knowledge in refusing to lend money to Byron.
In the ultimate resort judgment is the power to assimilate knowledge
and to use it. The opinions of men and the movement of markets are all
so much material for the perfected instrument of the mind.
But judgment may prove a sterile capacity if it is not accompanied by
industry. The mill must have grist on which to work, and it is industry
which pours in the grain.
A great opportunity may be lost and an irretrievable error committed by
a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of
thought. "He who would be Cæsar anywhere," says Kipling, "must know
everything everywhere." Nearly everything comes to the man who is always
all there.
Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally
industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or
circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work. Hogarth's
industrious and idle apprentice point a moral, but they do not tell a
true tale. The real trouble about industry is to apply it in the right
direction--and it is therefore the servant of judgment. The true secret
of industry well applied is concentration, and there are many
well-known ways of learning that art--the most potent handmaiden of
success. Industry can be acquired; it should never be squandered.
But health is the foundation both of judgment and industry--and
therefore of success. And without health everything is difficult. Who
can exercise a sound judgment if he is feeling irritable in the morning?
Who can work hard if he is suffering from a perpetual feeling of
malaise?
The future lies with the people who will take exercise and not too much
exercise. Athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is
invaluable. No ordinary man can hope to succeed who does not work his
body in moderation. The danger of the athlete is to believe that in
kicking a goal he has won the game of life. His object is no longer to
be fit for work, but to be superfit for play. He sees the means and the
end through an inverted telescope. The story books always tell us that
the Rowing Blue finishes up as a High Court Judge.
The truth is very different. The career of sport leads only to failure,
satiety, or impotence.
The hero of the playing fields becomes the dunce of the office. Other
men go on playing till middle-age robs them of their physical powers. At
the end the whole thing is revealed as vanity. Play tennis or golf once
a day and you may be famous; play it three times a day and you will be
in danger of being thought a professional--without the reward.
The pursuit of pleasure is equally ephemeral. Time and experience rob
even amusement of its charm, and the night before is not worth next
morning's headache. Practical success alone makes early middle-age the
most pleasurable period of a man's career. What has been worked for in
youth then comes to its fruition.
It is true that brains alone are not influence, and that money alone is
not influence, but brains and money combined are power. And fame, the
other object of ambition, is only another name for either money or
power.
Never was there a moment more favourable for turning talent towards
opportunity and opportunity into triumph than Great Britain now presents
to the man or woman whom ambition stirs to make a success of life. The
dominions of the British Empire abolished long ago the privileges which
birth confers. No bar has been set there to prevent poverty rising to
the heights of wealth and power, if the man were found equal to the
task.
The same development has taken place in Great Britain to-day. Men are no
longer born into Cabinets; the ladder of education is rapidly reaching a
perfection which enables a man born in a cottage or a slum attaining the
zenith of success and power.
There stand the three attributes to be attained--Judgment, Industry, and
Health. Judgment can be improved, industry can be acquired, health can
be attained by those who will take the trouble. These are the three
pillars on which we can build the golden pinnacle of success.
II
HAPPINESS: THREE SECRETS
Near by the Temple of Success based on the three pillars of Health,
Industry, and Judgment, stands another temple. Behind the curtains of
its doors is concealed the secret of happiness.
There are, of course, many forms of that priceless gift. Different
temperaments will interpret it differently. Various experiences will
produce variations of the blessing. A man may make a failure in his
affairs and yet remain happy. The spiritual and inner life is a thing
apart from material success. Even a man who, like Robert Louis
Stevenson, suffers from chronic ill-health can still be happy.
But we must leave out these exceptions and deal with the normal man, who
lives by and for his practical work, and who desires and enjoys both
success and health. Granted that he has these two possessions, must he
of necessity be happy? Not so. He may have access to the first temple,
but the other temple may still be forbidden him. A rampant ambition can
be a torture to him. An exaggerated selfishness can make his life
miserable, or an uneasy conscience may join with the sins of pride to
take their revenge on his mentality. For the man who has attained
success and health there are three great rules: "To do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly." These are the three pillars of the
Temple of Happiness.
Justice, which is another word for honesty in practice and in intention,
is perhaps the easiest of the virtues for the successful man of affairs
to acquire. His experience has schooled him to something more profound
than the acceptance of the rather crude dictum that "Honesty is the best
policy"--which is often interpreted to mean that it is a mistake to go
to gaol. But real justice must go far beyond a mere fear of the law, or
even a realisation that it does not pay to indulge in sharp practice in
business. It must be a mental habit--a fixed intention to be fair in
dealing with money or politics, a natural desire to be just and to
interpret all bargains and agreements in the spirit as well as in the
letter.
The idea that nearly all successful men are unscrupulous is very
frequently accepted. To the man who knows, the doctrine is simply
foolish. Success is not the only or the final test of character, but it
is the best rough-and-ready reckoner. The contrary view that success
probably implies a moral defect springs from judging a man by the
opinions of his rivals, enemies, or neighbours. The real judges of a
man's character are his colleagues. If they speak well of him, there is
nothing much wrong. The failure, on the other hand, can always be sure
of being popular with the men who have beaten him. They give him a
testimonial instead of a cheque. It would be too curious a speculation
to pursue to ask whether Justice, like the other virtues, is not a form
of self-interest. To answer it in the affirmative would condemn equally
the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount and the advice to do unto
others what they should do unto you. But this is certain. No man can be
happy if he suffers from a perpetual doubt of his own justice.
The second quality, Mercy, has been regarded as something in contrast or
conflict with justice. It is not really so. Mercy resembles the
prerogative of the judge to temper the law to suit individual cases. It
must be of a kindred temper with justice, or it would degenerate into
mere weakness or folly. A man wants to be certain of his own just
inclination before he can dare to handle mercy. But the quality of mercy
is, perhaps, not so common in the human heart as to require this
caution. It is a quality that has to be acquired. But the man of success
and affairs ought to be the last person to complain of the difficulty of
acquiring it. He has in his early days felt the whip-hand too often not
to sympathise with the feelings of the under-dog. And he always knows
that at some time in his career he, too, may need a merciful
interpretation of a financial situation. Shakespeare may not have had
this in his mind when he said that mercy "blesseth him that gives and
him that takes"; but he is none the less right. Those who exercise mercy
lay up a store of it for themselves. Shylock had law on his side, but
not justice or mercy. One is reminded of his case by the picture of
certain Jews and Gentiles alike as seen playing roulette at Monte Carlo.
Their losses, inevitable to any one who plays long enough, seem to
sadden them. M. Blanc would be doing a real act of mercy if he would
exact his toll not in cash, but in flesh. Some of the players are of a
figure and temperament which would miss the pound of flesh far less than
the pound sterling.
What, then, in its essence is the quality of mercy? It is something
beyond the mere desire not to push an advantage too far. It is a feeling
of tenderness springing out of harsh experience, as a flower springs out
of a rock. It is an inner sense of gratitude for the scheme of things,
finding expression in outward action, and, therefore, assuring its
possessor of an abiding happiness.
The quality of Humility is by far the most difficult to attain. There
is something deep down in the nature of a successful man of affairs
which seems to conflict with it. His career is born in a sense of
struggle and courage and conquest, and the very type of the effort seems
to invite in the completed form a temperament of arrogance. I cannot
pretend to be humble myself; all I can confess is the knowledge that in
so far as I could acquire humility I should be happier. Indeed, many
instances prove that success and humility are not incompatible. One of
the most eminent of our politicians is by nature incurably modest. The
difficulty in reconciling the two qualities lies in that "perpetual
presence of self to self which, though common enough in men of great
ambition and ability, never ceases to be a flaw."
But there is certainly one form of humility which all successful men
ought to be able to practise. They can avoid a fatal tendency to look
down on and despise the younger men who are planting their feet in their
own footsteps. The established arrogance which refuses credit or
opportunity to rising talent is unpardonable. A man who gives way to
what is really simply a form of jealousy cannot hope to be happy, for
jealousy is above all others the passion which tears the heart.
The great stumbling block which prevents success embracing humility is
the difficulty of distinguishing between the humble mind and the
cowardly one. When does humility merge into moral cowardice and courage
into arrogance? Some men in history have had this problem solved for
them. Stonewall Jackson is a type of the man of supreme courage and
action and judgment who was yet supremely humble--but he owed his bodily
and mental qualities to nature and his humility to the intensity of his
Presbyterian faith. Few men are so fortunately compounded.
Still, if the moral judgment is worth anything, a man should be able to
practise courage without arrogance and to walk humbly without fear. If
he can accomplish the feat he will reap no material reward, but an
immense harvest of inner well-being. He will have found the blue bird of
happiness which escapes so easily from the snare. He will have joined
Justice to Mercy and added Humility to Courage, and in the light of this
self-knowledge he will have attained the zenith of a perpetual
satisfaction.
III
LUCK
Some of the critics do not believe that the pinnacle of success stands
only on the three pillars of Judgment, Industry, and Health. They point
out that I have omitted one vital factor--Luck. So widespread is this
belief, largely pagan in its origin, that mere fortune either makes or
unmakes men, that it seems worth while to discuss and refute this
dangerous delusion.
Of course, if the doctrine merely means that men are the victims of
circumstances and surroundings, it is a truism. It is luckier to be born
heir to a peerage and £100,000 than to be born in Whitechapel. Past and
present Chancellors of the Exchequer have gone far in removing much of
this discrepancy in fortune. Again, a disaster which destroys a single
individual may alter the whole course of a survivor's career. But the
devotees of the Goddess of Luck do not mean this at all. They hold that
some men are born lucky and others unlucky, as though some Fortune
presided at their birth; and that, irrespective of all merits, success
goes to those on whom Fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she
frowns. Or at least luck is regarded as a kind of attribute of a man
like a capacity for arithmetic or games.
This view is in essence the belief of the true gambler--not the man who
backs his skill at cards, or his knowledge of racing against his
rival--but who goes to the tables at Monte Carlo backing runs of good or
ill luck. It has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of
chance to produce events continuously favourable or continuously
unfavourable.
The whole conception is a nightmare of the mind, peculiarly unfavourable
to success in business. The laws of games of chance are as inexorable as
those of the universe. A skilful player will, in the long run, defeat a
less skilful one; the bank at Monte Carlo will always beat the
individual if he stays long enough. I presume that the bank there is
managed honestly, although I neither know nor care whether it is. But
this at least is certain--the cagnotte gains 3 per cent. on every spin.
Mathematically, a man is bound to lose the capital he invests in every
thirty throws when his luck is neither good nor bad. In the long run his
luck will leave him with a balanced book--minus the cagnotte. My advice
to any man would be, "Never play roulette at all; but if you must play,
hold the cagnotte."
The Press, of course, often publishes stories of great fortunes made at
Monte Carlo. The proprietors there understand publicity. Such statements
bring them new patrons.
It is necessary to dwell on this gambling side of the question, because
every man who believes in luck has a touch of the gambler in him, though
he may never have played a stake. And from the point of view of real
success in affairs the gambler is doomed in advance. It is a frame of
mind which a man should discourage severely when he finds it within the
citadel of his mind. It is a view which too frequently infects young men
with more ambition than industry.
The view of Fortune as some shining goddess sweeping down from heaven
and touching the lucky recipient with her pinions of gold dazzles the
mind of youth. Men think that with a single stroke they will either be
made rich for life or impoverished for ever.
The more usual view is less ambitious. It is the complaint that Fortune
has never looked a man's way. Failure due to lack of industry is excused
on the ground that the goddess has proved adverse. There is a third form
of this mental disease. A young man spoke to me in Monte Carlo the other
day, and said, "I could do anything if only I had the chance, but that
chance never comes my way." On that same evening I saw the aspirant
throwing away whatever chance he may have had at the tables.
A similar type of character is to be found in the young man who
consistently refuses good offers or even small chances of work because
they are not good enough for him. He expects that Luck will suddenly
bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the
high opinions he holds of his own capacities. After a time people tire
of giving him any openings at all. In wooing the Goddess of Luck he has
neglected the Goddess of Opportunity.
These men in middle age fall into a well-known class. They can be seen
haunting the Temple, and explaining to their more industrious and
successful associates that they would have been Lord Chancellor if a big
brief had ever come their way. They develop that terrible disease known
as "the genius of the untried." Their case is almost as pitiful or
ludicrous as that of the man of very moderate abilities whom drink or
some other vice has rendered quite incapable. There will still be found
men to whisper to each other as he passes, "Ah, if Brown didn't drink,
he might do anything."
Far different will be the mental standpoint of the man who really means
to succeed. He will banish the idea of luck from his mind. He will
accept every opportunity, however small it may appear, which seems to
lead to the possibility of greater things. He will not wait on luck to
open the portals to fortune. He will seize opportunity by the forelock
and develop its chances by his industry. Here and there he may go
wrong, where judgment or experience is lacking. But out of his very
defeats he will learn to do better in the future, and in the maturity of
his knowledge he will attain success. At least, he will not be found
sitting down and whining that luck alone has been against him.
There remains a far more subtle argument in favour of the gambling
temperament which believes in luck. It is that certain men possess a
kind of sixth sense in the realm of speculative enterprise. These men,
it is said, know by inherent instinct, divorced from reasoned knowledge,
what enterprise will succeed or fail, or whether the market will rise or
fall. They are the children of fortune.
The real diagnosis of these cases is a very different one from that put
forward by the mystic apostles of the Golden Luck. Eminent men who are
closely in touch with the great affairs of politics or business often
act on what appears to be a mere instinct of this kind. But, in truth,
they have absorbed, through a careful and continuous study of events
both in the present and the past, so much knowledge, that their minds
reach a conclusion automatically, just as the heart beats without any
stimulus from the brain. Ask them for the reasons of their decision, and
they become inarticulate or unintelligible in their replies. Their
conscious mind cannot explain the long-hoarded experience of their
subconscious self. When they prove right in their forecast, the world
exclaims, "What luck!" Well, if luck of that kind is long enough
continued it will be best ascribed to judgment.
The real "lucky" speculator is of a very different character. He makes a
brilliant coup or so and then disappears in some overwhelming disaster.
He is as quick in losing his fortune as he is in making it. Nothing
except Judgment and Industry, backed by Health, will ensure real and
permanent success. The rest is sheer superstition.
Two pictures may be put before the believer in luck as an element in
success. The one is Monte Carlo--where the Goddess Fortune is chiefly
worshipped--steeped in almost perpetual sunshine, piled in castellated
masses against its hills, gaining the sense of the illimitable from the
blue horizon of the Mediterranean--a shining land meant for clean
exercise and repose. Yet there youth is only seen in its depravity,
while old age flocks to the central gambling hell to excite or mortify
its jaded appetites by playing a game it is bound to lose.
Here you may see in their decay the people who believe in luck, steeped
in an atmosphere of smoke and excitement, while beauty of Nature or the
pursuits of health call to them in vain. Three badly lighted tennis
courts compete with thirty splendidly furnished casino rooms. But of
means for obtaining the results of exercise without the exertion there
is no end. The Salle des Bains offers to the fat and the jaded the hot
bath, the electric massage, and all the mechanical instruments for
restoring energy. Modern science and art combine to outdo the
attractions of the baths of Imperial Rome.
In far different surroundings from these were born the careers of the
living captains of modern industry and finance--Inchcape, Pirrie,
Cowdray, Leverhulme, or McKenna. These men believed in industry, not in
fortune, and in judgment rather than in chance. The youth of this
generation will do well to be guided by their example, and follow their
road to success. Not by the worship of the Goddess of Luck were the
great fortunes established or the great reputations made.
It is natural and right for youth to hope, but if hope turns to a belief
in luck, it becomes a poison to the mind. The youth of England has
before it a splendid opportunity, but let it remember always that
nothing but work and brains counts, and that a man can even work himself
into brains. No goddess will open to any man the portals of the temple
of success. Young men must advance boldly to the central shrine along
the arduous but well-tried avenues of Judgment and Industry.
IV
MODERATION
Judgment, Industry, and Health, as the instruments of success, depend
largely on a fourth quality, which may be called either restraint or
moderation. The successful men of these arduous days are those who
control themselves strictly.
Those who are learned in the past may point out exceptions to this rule.
But Charles James Fox or Bolingbroke were only competing with equals in
the art of genteel debauchery. Their habits were those of their
competitors. They were not fighting men who safeguarded their health and
kept a cool head in the morning. It is impossible to imagine to-day a
leader of the Opposition who, after a night of gambling at faro, would
go down without a breakfast or a bath to develop an important attack on
the Government. The days of the brilliant debauchee are over.
Politicians no longer retire for good at forty to nurse the gout. The
antagonists that careless genius would have to meet in the modern world
would be of sterner stuff.
The modern men of action realise that a sacrifice of health is a
sacrifice of years--and that every year is of value. They protect their
constitutions as the final bulwark against the assault of the enemy. A
man without a digestion is likely to be a man without a heart. Political
and financial courage spring as much from the nerves or the stomach as
from the brain. And without courage no politician or business man is
worth anything. Moderation is, therefore, the secret of success.
And, above all, I would urge on ambitious youth the absolute necessity
of moderation in alcohol. I am the last man in the world to be in favour
of the regulation of the social habits of the people by law. Here every
man should be his own controller and law-giver. But this much is
certain: no man can achieve success who is not strict with himself in
this matter; nor is it a bad thing for an aspiring man of business to be
a teetotaller.
Take the case of the Prime Minister. No man is more careful of himself.
He sips a single glass of burgundy at dinner for the obvious reason that
he enjoys it, and not because it might stimulate his activities. He has
given up the use of tobacco. Bolingbroke as a master of manoeuvres would
have had a poor chance against him. For Bolingbroke lost his nerve in
the final disaster, whereas the Prime Minister could always be trusted
to have all his wits and courage about him. Mr. Lloyd George is regarded
as a man riding the storm of politics with nerves to drive him on. No
view could be more untrue. In the very worst days of the war in 1916 he
could be discovered at the War Office taking his ten minutes' nap with
his feet up on a chair and discarded newspapers lying like the débris of
a battle-field about him. It would be charitable to suppose that he had
fallen asleep before he had read his newspapers! He even takes his golf
in very moderate doses. We are often told that he needs a prolonged
holiday, but somewhere in his youth he finds inexhaustible reserves of
power which he conserves into his middle age. In this way he has found
the secret of his temporary Empire. It is for this reason that the man
in command is never too busy to see a caller who has the urgency of
vital business at his back.
The Ex-Leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Bonar Law, however much he
may differ from the Premier in many aspects of his temperament, also
finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and caution. As a
player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in enthusiasm for tennis
what he lacks in skill. His habits are almost ascetic in their rigour.
He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be
wasted on him. A single course of the plainest food suffices his
appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with a long meal.
His pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems to draw him with a
magic attraction. As it was, his physical resources stood perhaps the
greatest strain that has been imposed on any public man in our time.
From the moment when he joined the first Coalition Government in 1915 to
the day when he laid down office in 1921 he was beset by cares and
immersed in labours which would have overwhelmed almost any other man.
Neither this nor succeeding Coalition Governments were popular with a
great section of his Conservative followers, and to the task of taking
decisions on the war was added the constant and irritating necessity of
keeping his own supporters in line with the administration. In 1916 he
had to take the vital decision which displaced Mr. Asquith in favour of
Mr. Lloyd George, and during the latter's Premiership he had to suffer
the strain of constantly accommodating himself, out of a feeling of
personal loyalty, to methods which were not congenial to his own nature.
In the face of all these stresses he never would take a holiday, and
nothing except the rigid moderation of his life enabled him to keep the
cool penetration of his judgment intact and his physical vigour going
during those six terrible years.
The Lord Chancellor might appear to be an exception to the rule. This is
very far from being the case. It is true that his temperament knows no
mean either in work or play. One of the most successful speeches he ever
delivered in the House of Commons was the fruit of a day of violent
exercise, followed by a night of preparation, with a wet towel tied
round the head. And yet he appeared perfectly fresh; he has the
priceless asset of the most marvellous constitution in the British
Empire. Kipling's poem on France suggests an adaptation to describe the
Lord Chancellor:
"Furious in luxury, merciless in toil,
Terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil."
No man has spent himself more freely in the hunting-field or works
harder to-day at games. Yet, with all this tendency to the extreme of
work and play, he is a man of iron resolution and determined
self-control. Although the most formidable enemy of the Pussyfooters and
the most powerful protector of freedom in the social habits of the
people that the Cabinet contains, he is, like Mr. Bonar Law, a
teetotaler. It is this capacity for governing himself which is pointing
upwards to still greater heights of power.
Mr. McKenna is, perhaps, the most striking instance of what
determination can achieve in the way of health and physique. His rowing
Blue was the simple and direct result of taking pains--in the form of a
rowing dummy in which he practised in his own rooms. The achievement
was typical of a career which has in its dual success no parallel in
modern life. There have been many Chancellors of the Exchequer and many
big men in the City. That a man, after forcing his way to the front in
politics, should transfer his activities to the City and become in a
short four years its most commanding figure is unheard of. And Mr.
McKenna had the misfortune to enter public life with the handicap of a
stutter. He set himself to cure it by reading Burke aloud to his family,
and he cured it. He was then told by his political friends that he spoke
too quickly to be effective. He cured himself of this defect too, by
rehearsing his speeches to a time machine--an ordinary stop-watch, not
one of the H.G. Wells' variety. Indeed, if any man can be said to have
"made himself," it is Mr. McKenna. He bridges the gulf between politics
and the City, and brings one to a final instance of the purely business
man.
Mr. Gordon Selfridge is an exemplar of the simple life practical in the
midst of unbounded success. He goes to his office every morning
regularly at nine o'clock. In the midst of opulence he eats a frugal
lunch in a room which supplies the one thing of which he is
avaricious--big windows and plenty of fresh air. For light and air spell
for him, as for the rest of us, health and sound judgment. He possesses,
indeed, one terrible and hidden secret--a kind of baron's castle
somewhere in the heart of South England, where he may retire beyond the
pursuit of King or people, and hurl his defiance from its walls to all
the intruders which threaten the balance of the mind. No one has yet
discovered this castle, for it exists only on paper. When Mr. Gordon
Selfridge requires mental relaxation, he may be found poring over the
plans which are to be the basis of this fairy edifice. Moat and parapet,
tower, dungeon, and drawbridge, are all there, only awaiting the Mason
of the future to translate them into actuality. But the success of Mr.
Selfridge lies in his frugality, and not in his dreams. One can afford
to have a castle in Spain when one possesses the money to pay for it.
It is the complexity of modern life which enforces moderation. Science
has created vast populations and huge industries, and also given the
means by which single minds can direct them. Invention gives these
gifts, and compels man to use them. Man is as much the slave as the
master of the machine, as he turns to the telephone or the telegram. In
this fierce turmoil of the modern world he can only keep his judgment
intact, his nerves sound, and his mind secure by the process of
self-discipline, which may be equally defined as restraint, control, or
moderation. This is the price which must be paid for the gifts the gods
confer.
V
MONEY
Many serious letters and a half-humorous criticism in _Punch_ suggest
that I am to be regarded as the apostle of a pure materialism. That is
not so. I quite recognise the existence of other ambitions in the walks
of Art, Religion, or Literature. But at the very outset I confined the
scope of my advice to those who wish to triumph in practical affairs. I
am talking to the young men who want to succeed in business and to build
up a new nation. Criticism based on any other conception of my purpose
is a spent shaft.
Money--the word has a magical sound. It conjures up before the vision
some kind of enchanted paradise where to wish is to have--Aladdin's lamp
brought down to earth.
Yet in reality money carries with it only two qualities of value: the
character it creates in the making; the self-expression of the
individuality in the use of it, when once it has been made. The art of
making money implies all those qualities--resolution, concentration,
economy, self-control--which make for success and happiness. The power
of using it makes a man who has become the captain of his own soul in
the process of its acquirement also the master of the circumstances
which surround him. He can shape his immediate world to his own liking.
Apart from these two faculties, character in acquirement, power in use,
money has little value, and is just as likely to be a curse as a
blessing. For this reason the money master will care little for leaving
vast wealth to his descendants. He knows that they would be better men
for going down stripped into the struggle, with no inheritance but that
of brains and character. Wealth without either the wish, the brains, or
the power to use it is too often the medium through which men pamper the
flesh with good living, and the mind with inanity, until death,
operating through the liver, hurries the fortunate youth into an early
grave. The inheritance tax should have no terrors for the millionaire.
The value of money is, therefore, first in the striving for it and then
in the use of it. The ambition itself is a fine one--but how is it to be
achieved?
I would lay down certain definite rules for the guidance of the young
man who, starting with small things, is determined to go on to great
ones:--
1. The first key which opens the door of success is the trading
instinct, the knowledge and sense of the real value of any article.
Without it a man need not trouble to enter business at all, but if
he possesses it even in a rudimentary form he can cultivate it in
the early days when the mind is still plastic, until it develops
beyond all recognition. When I was a boy I knew the value in
exchange of every marble in my village, and this practice of valuing
became a subconscious habit until, so long as I remained in
business, I always had an intuitive perception of the real and not
the face value of any article.
The young man who will walk through life developing the capacity for
determining values, and then correcting his judgments by his
information, is the man who will succeed in business.
2. But supposing that a young man has acquired this sense of
values, he may yet ruin himself before he comes to the fruition of
his talent if he will not practise economy. By economy I mean the
economic conduct of his business. Examine your profit and loss
account before you go out to conquer the financial world, and then
go out for conquest--if the account justifies the enterprise. Too
many men spend their time in laying down "pipe-lines" for future
profits which may not arrive or only arrive for some newcomer who
has taken over the business. There is nothing like sticking to one
line of business until you have mastered it. A man who has learned
how to conduct a single industry at a profit has conquered the
obstacles which stand in the way of success in the larger world of
enterprise.
3. Do not try to cut with too wide a swath. This last rule is the
most important of all. Many promising young men have fallen into
ruin from the neglect of this simple principle. It is so easy for
premature ambition to launch men out into daring schemes for which
they have neither the resources nor the experience. Acquire the
knowledge of values, practise economy, and learn to read the minds
of men, and your technique will then be perfected and ready for use
on wider fields. The instinct for values, the habit of economy, the
technique of business, are only three forms of the supreme quality
of that judgment which is success.
For these reasons it is the first £10,000 which counts. There is the
real struggle, the test of character, and the warranty of success. Youth
and strength are given us to use in that first struggle, and a man must
feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he is
going to be a great man of business. They must shake the very fibre of
his being as the conception of a great picture shakes an artist. But the
first ten thousand made, he can advance with greater freedom and take
affairs in his stride. He will have the confidence of experience, and
can paint with a big brush because all the details of affairs are now
familiar to his mentality. With this assured technique nothing will
check the career. "Why," says the innkeeper in an adaptation from
Bernard Shaw's sketch of Napoleon in Italy, "conquering countries is
like folding a tablecloth. Once the first fold is made, the rest is
easy. Conquer one, conquer all."
Such in effect is the career of the great captains of industry. Yet the
man who attains, by the practice of these rules, a great fortune, may
fail of real achievement and happiness. He may not be able to recognise
that the qualities of the aspirant are not exactly the qualities of the
man who has arrived. The sense of general responsibility must supersede
the spirit of private adventure.
The stability of credit becomes the watchword of high finance. Thus the
great money master will not believe that periods of depression are of
necessity ruinous. It is true that no great profits will be made in such
years of depression. But the lean years will not last for ever. Industry
during the period of deflation goes through a process like that of an
over-fat man taking a Turkish bath. The extravagances are eliminated,
new invention and energy spring up to meet the call of necessity, and
when the boom years come again it finds industry, like a highly trained
athlete, ready to pour out the goods and pay the wages. Economic
methods are nurtured by depression.
But when all has been said and done, the sceptic may still question us.
Is the capacity to make money something to be desired and striven for,
something worth having in the character, some proof of ability in the
mind? The answer is "Yes."
Money which is striven for brings with it the real qualities in life.
Here are the counters which mark character and brains. The money brain
is, in the modern world, the supreme brain. Why? Because that which the
greatest number of men strive for will produce the fiercest competition
of intellect. Politics are for the few; they are a game, a fancy, or an
inheritance. Leaving out the man of genius who flares out, perhaps, once
or twice in a century, the amount of ability which enables a man to cut
a very respectable figure in a Cabinet is extraordinarily low, compared
with that demanded in the world of industry and finance. The politician
will never believe this, but it is so.
The battles of the market-place are real duels, on which realities of
life and death and fortune or poverty and even of fame depend. Here men
fight with a precipice behind them, not a pension of £2,000 a year. The
young men who go down into that press must win their spurs by no man's
favour. But youth can triumph; it has the resolution when the mind is
still plastic to gain that judgment which experience gives.
My advice to the young men of to-day is simply this: Money is nothing
but the fruit of resolution and intellect applied to the affairs of the
world. To an unshakable resolution fortune will oppose no bar.
VI
EDUCATION
A great number of letters have reached me from young men who seem to
think that the road to success is barred to them owing to defects in
their education. To them I would send this message:
Never believe that success cannot come your way because you have
not been educated in the orthodox and regular fashion.
The nineteenth century made a god of education, and its eminent men
placed learning as the foremost influence in life.
I am bold enough to dissent, if by education is meant a course of study
imposed from without. Indeed, such a course may be a hindrance rather
than a help to a man entering on a business career. No young man on the
verge of life ought to be in the least discouraged by the fact that he
is not stamped with the hall mark of Oxford or Cambridge.
Possibly, indeed, he has escaped a grave danger; for if, in the
impressionable period of youth, attention is given to one kind of
knowledge, it may very likely be withdrawn from another. A life of
sheltered study does not allow a boy to learn the hard facts of the
world--and business is concerned with reality. The truth is that
education is the fruit of temperament, not success the fruit of
education. What a man draws into himself by his own natural volition is
what counts, because it becomes a living part of himself. I will make
one exception in my own case--the Shorter Catechism, which was acquired
by compulsion and yet remains with me.
My own education was of a most rudimentary description. It will be
difficult for the modern English mind to grasp the parish of Newcastle,
New Brunswick, in the 'eighties--sparse patches of cultivation
surrounded by the virgin forest and broken by the rush of an immense
river. For half the year the land is in the iron grip of snow and frost,
and the Miramichi is frozen right down to its estuary--so that "the
rain is turned to a white dust, and the sea to a great green stone."
It was the seasons which decided my compulsory education. In the winter
I attended school because it was warm inside, and in the summer I spent
my time in the woods because it was warm outside.
Perhaps the most remarkable instance of what self-education can do is to
be found in the achievements of Mr. J.L. Garvin. He received no formal
education at all in the public school or university sense, and he began
to work for his living at an early age. Yet, not only is he, perhaps,
the most eminent of living journalists, but his knowledge of books is,
if not more profound than that of any other man in England, certainly
wider in range, for it is not limited to any country or language. By his
own unaided efforts he has gained not only knowledge, but style and
judgment. To listen to his talk on literature is not merely to yield
oneself to the spell of the magician, but to feel that the critic has
got his estimate of values right.
Reading, indeed, is the real source both of education and of style.
Read what you like, not what somebody else tells you that you ought to
like. That reading alone is valuable which becomes part of the reader's
own mind and nature, and this can never be the case if the matter is not
the result of self-selection, but forced on the student from outside.
Read anything and read everything--just as a man with a sound digestion
and a good appetite eats largely and indifferently of all that is set
before him. The process of selection and rejection, or, in other words,
of taste, will come best and naturally to any man who has the right kind
of brains in his head. Some books he will throw away; others he will
read over and over again. My education owes much to Scott and Stevenson,
stealthily removed from my father's library and read in the hayloft when
I should have been in school.
As a partiality for the right kind of literature grows on a man he is
unconsciously forming his mind and his taste and his style, and by a
natural impulse and no forced growth the whole world of letters is his.
There are, of course, in addition, certain special branches of
education needing teaching which are of particular value to the business
life.
Foremost among these are mathematics and foreign languages. It is not
suggested that a knowledge of the higher mathematics is essential to a
successful career; none the less it is true that the type of mind which
takes readily to mathematics is the kind which succeeds in the realm of
industry and finance.
One of the things I regret is that my business career was shaped on a
continent which speaks one single language for commercial purposes from
the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico. Foreign languages are,
therefore, a sealed book to me. But if a man can properly appraise the
value of something he does not possess, I would place a knowledge of
languages high in the list of acquirements making for success.