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HOW TO GET ON
A Business Series of Practical
Inspiration
I.
THE ESSENTIALS
OF BIG SUCCESS
By Max Rittenberg
(Au thor of Swirling Wa ters. The Modern
Chesterfield,' The Mind Reader,etc)
O N E of our foremost financiers,
speaking of his career,
once made an observation
combining modesty with a
very profound truth of human
nature. "I attribute my success,"
he said in effect, "to having gathered
around me men who were more capable
than myself in various specialized directions."
That statement would probably hold
good for ninety-nine per cent of our
field-marshals of industry. Their own
special ability has been their faculty for
picking out the special abilities of others
— recognizing, choosing, fostering,
moulding, co-ordinating. They have
made their fortunes by their shrewdness
in judging, and their tactfulness in handling,
the raw material of human nature.
In the complex of modern business, no
man but a super-genius could hope to
combine in himself the ideals of buyer,
sales manager, advertising manager, accountant,
credit man, works' superintendent.
There may have been a time when
a business could be run with a cast of
one "star" and a company of "supers,"
but emphatically it is not so today. The
big employer aims to find men cleverer
than himself in specialized directions; to
train them, to mould them on the lines of
his general policy, and to treat them so
generously that loyalty need not be
strained or ambition feel stultified.
There are men who possess by nature
the gift of character-reading. There are
many.others who have trained themselves
to judge character, crystallizing their
observation into definite rules for their
private guidance. A certain superintendent
in a large factory engages all hands
himself. His procedure is to keep a line
of applicants waiting outside his private
office for a full half-hour. Then, unexpectedly,
he comes out from the office
and walks rapidly down the line, looking
for:
Drinkers.
Men with an open sign of disease.
Men who do not meet his glance direct.
Men who are standing slack-kneed.
Men who shuffle their feet.
He eliminates all applicants with those
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