Like a croupier at a vast roulette table, Time presides over the realm
of business.
Time is the tap-root of most business uncertainties.
No one can tell what will happen a year, a month, a day, a minute from
now--the future may bring floods and wars, pestilence and drouth; or it
may bring great crops and fair weather, happiness and prosperity.
As business has become more and more complicated, the time element has
become larger and larger. The time element as we know it does not exist
in simple barter--a man weaves a piece of cloth and exchanges it for a
bushel of corn: time is of no account in the transaction. A small
jobber located in the same territory as refiners buys a small amount of
sugar today and distributes it to his trade the next--time is
negligible. A large jobber, buying perhaps for several branch houses,
or located at points which necessitate a delay of two or three weeks in
transit, may find it necessary even on a declining market to purchase a
considerable amount of sugar, and, as a result, weeks may go by before
his sugar arrives and is sold--time is vitally important.
Time is an element in costs and prices, because over any extended
period of time many things may happen to influence costs and prices.
All business planning must deal with Time.
To the unenlightened business man, Time is a bugaboo--a gambler whose
cards are stacked and against whom there is no defense. Such a man
conducts his business from hand to mouth, in constant fear. He is a
fatalist, taking his profits and losses as if they were gifts or blows
of Fortune.
The enlightened man works with Time as an impartial, exacting,
inevitable power for his own good or ill. He shapes his actions and
enlists the services of Time to prevent catastrophe on the one hand,
and to enforce prosperity and happiness on the other. Storms may come,
but so far as his mind may control it, he is "the master of his fate."