Edward Bok does not now remember whether the mental picture had been
given him, or whether he had conjured it up for himself; but he
certainly was possessed of the idea, as are so many young men entering
business, that the path which led to success was very difficult: that it
was overfilled with a jostling, bustling, panting crowd, each eager to
reach the goal; and all ready to dispute every step that a young man
should take; and that favoritism only could bring one to the top.
After Bok had been in the world of affairs, he wondered where were these
choked avenues, these struggling masses, these competitors for every
inch of vantage. Then he gradually discovered that they did not exist.
In the first place, he found every avenue leading to success wide open
and certainly not over-peopled. He was surprised how few there were who
really stood in a young man's way. He found that favoritism was not the
factor that he had been led to suppose. He realized it existed in a few
isolated cases, but to these every one had pointed and about these every
one had talked until, in the public mind, they had multiplied in number
and assumed a proportion that the facts did not bear out.
Here and there a relative "played a favorite," but even with the push
and influence behind him "the lucky one," as he was termed, did not seem
to make progress, unless he had merit. It was not long before Bok
discovered that the possession of sheer merit was the only real factor
that actually counted in any of the places where he had been employed or
in others which he had watched; that business was so constructed and
conducted that nothing else, in the face of competition, could act as
current coin. And the amazing part of it all to Bok was how little merit
there was. Nothing astonished him more than the low average ability of
those with whom he worked or came into contact.
He looked at the top, and instead of finding it overcrowded, he was
surprised at the few who had reached there; the top fairly begged for
more to climb its heights.
For every young man, earnest, eager to serve, willing to do more than he
was paid for, he found ten trying to solve the problem of how little
they could actually do for the pay received.
It interested Bok to listen to the talk of his fellow-workers during
luncheon hours and at all other times outside of office hours. When the
talk did turn on the business with which they were concerned, it
consisted almost entirely of wages, and he soon found that, with
scarcely an exception, every young man was terribly underpaid, and that
his employer absolutely failed to appreciate his work. It was
interesting, later, when Bok happened to get the angle of the employer,
to discover that, invariably, these same lamenting young men were those
who, from the employer's point of view, were either greatly overpaid or
so entirely worthless as to be marked for early decapitation.
Bok felt that this constant thought of the wages earned or deserved was
putting the cart before the horse; he had schooled himself into the
belief that if he did his work well, and accomplished more than was
expected of him, the question of wages would take care of itself. But,
according to the talk on every side, it was he who had the cart before
the horse. Bok had not only tried always to fill the particular job set
for him but had made it a rule at the same time to study the position
just ahead, to see what it was like, what it demanded, and then, as the
opportunity presented itself, do a part of that job in addition to his
own. As a stenographer, he tried always to clear off the day's work
before he closed his desk. This was not always possible, but he kept it
before him as a rule to be followed rather than violated.
One morning Bok's employer happened to come to the office earlier than
usual, to find the letters he had dictated late in the afternoon before
lying on his desk ready to be signed.
"These are the letters I gave you late yesterday afternoon, are they
not?" asked the employer.
"Yes, sir."
"Must have started early this morning, didn't you?"
"No, sir," answered Bok. "I wrote them out last evening before I left."
"Like to get your notes written out before they get stale?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good idea," said the employer.
"Yes, sir," answered Bok, "and I think it is even a better idea to get a
day's work off before I take my apron off."
"Well said," answered the employer, and the following payday Bok found
an increase in his weekly envelope.
It is only fair, however, to add here, parenthetically, that it is
neither just nor considerate to a conscientious stenographer for an
employer to delay his dictation until the end of the day's work, when,
merely by judicious management of his affairs and time, he can give his
dictation directly after opening his morning mail. There are two sides
to every question; but sometimes the side of the stenographer is not
kept in mind by the employer.
Bok found it a uniform rule among his fellow-workers to do exactly the
opposite to his own idea; there was an astonishing unanimity in working
by the clock; where the hour of closing was five o'clock the
preparations began five minutes before, with the hat and overcoat over
the back of the chair ready for the stroke of the hour. This concert of
action was curiously universal, no "overtime" was ever to be thought of,
and, as occasionally happened when the work did go over the hour, it was
not, to use the mildest term, done with care, neatness, or accuracy; it
was, to use a current phrase, "slammed off." Every moment beyond five
o'clock in which the worker was asked to do anything was by just so much
an imposition on the part of the employer, and so far as it could be
safely shown, this impression was gotten over to him.
There was an entire unwillingness to let business interfere with any
anticipated pleasure or personal engagement. The office was all right
between nine and five; one had to be there to earn a living; but after
five, it was not to be thought of for one moment. The elevators which
ran on the stroke of five were never large enough to hold the throng
which besieged them.
The talk during lunch hour rarely, if ever, turned toward business,
except as said before, when it dealt with underpaid services. In the
spring and summer it was invariably of baseball, and scores of young men
knew the batting averages of the different players and the standing of
the clubs with far greater accuracy than they knew the standing or the
discounts of the customers of their employers. In the winter the talk
was all of dancing, boxing, or plays.
It soon became evident to Bok why scarcely five out of every hundred of
the young men whom he knew made any business progress. They were not
interested; it was a case of a day's work and a day's pay; it was not a
question of how much one could do but how little one could get away
with. The thought of how well one might do a given thing never seemed to
occur to the average mind.
"Oh, what do you care?" was the favorite expression. "The boss won't
notice it if you break your back over his work; you won't get any more
pay."
And there the subject was dismissed, and thoroughly dismissed, too.
Eventually, then, Bok learned that the path that led to success was wide
open: the competition was negligible. There was no jostling. In fact,
travel on it was just a trifle lonely. One's fellow-travellers were
excellent company, but they were few! It was one of Edward Bok's
greatest surprises, but it was also one of his greatest stimulants. To
go where others could not go, or were loath to go, where at least they
were not, had a tang that savored of the freshest kind of adventure. And
the way was so simple, so much simpler, in fact, than its avoidance,
which called for so much argument, explanation, and discussion. One had
merely to do all that one could do, a little more than one was asked or
expected to do, and immediately one's head rose above the crowd and one
was in an employer's eye--where it is always so satisfying for an
employee to be! And as so few heads lifted themselves above the many,
there was never any danger that they would not be seen.
Of course, Edward Bok had to prove to himself that his conception of
conditions was right. He felt instinctively that it was, however, and
with this stimulus he bucked the line hard. When others played, he
worked, fully convinced that his play-time would come later. Where
others shirked, he assumed. Where others lagged, he accelerated his
pace. Where others were indifferent to things around them, he observed
and put away the results for possible use later. He did not make of
himself a pack-horse; what he undertook he did from interest in it, and
that made it a pleasure to him when to others it was a burden. He
instinctively reasoned it out that an unpleasant task is never
accomplished by stepping aside from it, but that, unerringly, it will
return later to be met and done.
Obstacles, to Edward Bok, soon became merely difficulties to be
overcome, and he trusted to his instinct to show him the best way to
overcome them. He soon learned that the hardest kind of work was back of
every success; that nothing in the world of business just happened, but
that everything was brought about, and only in one way--by a willingness
of spirit and a determination to carry through. He soon exploded for
himself the misleading and comfortable theory of luck: the only lucky
people, he found, were those who worked hard. To them, luck came in the
shape of what they had earned. There were exceptions here and there, as
there are to every rule; but the majority of these, he soon found, were
more in the seeming than in the reality. Generally speaking--and of
course to this rule there are likewise exceptions, or as the Frenchman
said, "All generalizations are false, including this one"--a man got in
this world about what he worked for.
And that became, for himself, the rule of Edward Bok's life.