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746 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
"Why yes. See here," and he showed
me a newspaper paragraph—then another—and
produced evidence to show
that his new names for brands of cigarettes
had attracted a good deal of attention.
"Originality pays, evidently," I remarked.
"I'm only just beginning," he remarked
with an air of confidence.
"There'll be something else by and by."
Every man in business—any kind of
vocation—will find that, whilst it pays
to do good work on the old lines, it pays
better to do good work on newer lines.
There are three points in every act of
originality. First, there is the existing
material; next, the individual mind at
work; lastly, the new product. It is not
difficult to trace these three in the case
I have just quoted. There have been
brands of cigarettes for years and years,
with names that possess nothing distinctive.
These form the existing material
A Monkey Is One
of the Most Faithful
Imitators in
the Business.
Have You Simian
Tendencies?
on which the individual mind must work
in order to produce the new result.
Naturally, the individual mind is the
most important item.
The greatest pull in life is the pull of
imitation. Fashion in wearing apparel,
—the power which suggests we must
follow the methods of our leaders,
whether we like them or not—has its
analogy in everything else. Thus when
we write letters we subscribe our signatures
at the end, causing the reader to
look there first in order to discover who
is the writer. If John Smith were to
adopt the old style and say, "John Smith
to Thomas Brown, greeting," people
would say "How absurd;" and yet it is
far more sensible than putting the address
first, the recipient's name next;and
the writer's name last of all. But that
is the fashion and we all imitate.
If a tobacco firm puts a new brand on
the market and calls it "Doughboy's
Friend," another firm will come out with
"Guard's Delight," and still another with
"Canteen Mixture." The two latter represent
imitation pure and simple; the
former stands for the individual mind,
which needless to say is the higher type.
You can easily decide your mental status
by asking how much thinking in your
business is your own, and how much
borrowed. Most men's quality could be
pictured thus:—
BORROWED THOUGHTS
MY OWN IDEAS
A few could be graphed in
this way:
MY OWN IDEAS
BORROWED THOUGHTS