Some business men do a vast amount of work without any apparent effort; they are rarely, if ever, rushed, and are seldom compelled to seclude themselves from their friends on account of the pressing demands of their business. Other people, who really accomplish very little, are always in a hurry; they seem to have a dozen things to do at once, and the result is, they are in a state of almost perpetual confusion, and the little they accomplish is only done by the greatest difficulty. In a very small country store perhaps a merchant can get along without any system or method in conducting his business. He knows where everything is in his stock, and can lay his hands on it at a moment’s notice, and if a customer calls for it he can serve him without any very great amount of trouble; but, on the other hand, if he is at the head of a vast business, some great establishment, perhaps, in which there are a hundred departments, it would be utterly impossible for him to keep track of things without the most methodical arrangement throughout the concern with which he is connected. Our great merchant leaves the details of his business to subordinates, who are accountable to him that everything goes right in the departments over which they are placed. Some of the great establishments in our city employ thousands of men, yet so perfect is the system that every man can be located at a moment’s notice, and the closest watch can be kept upon the work which he is doing. There is a system for receiving and shipping goods, a system for keeping track of stock while in the hands of the producer or dealer; there is a cash system, a system of bookkeeping by which a mistake of a penny can be detected at the close of every day’s business. It is only by these wise and sensible precautions that a great business can be carried on successfully. Thousands of losses, little and great, are averted that would certainly occur did not this watchfulness prevail in every department.

A writer in the Detroit Free Press said not long ago that “there are some occupations which compel those who follow them to be orderly and methodical. There are none in which these qualities, where they have been neglected, can not be cultivated to good advantage. Deficiency in them is far from being a token of genius. It signifies something of indolence and much that is slipshod. Every man knows whether or not he is as orderly and methodical as he should be. If he is not, unless he is too old to attempt the task, he should endeavour to improve in these respects. There is no danger of his carrying it to that excess which marks persons who have a passionate love of order, but there is a likelihood that he will materially lighten his work, or find that he can do much more than he has been in the habit of doing.”

It seems to the Criterion that this is the keynote of a business man’s success. No man who conducts his business in a slipshod manner can expect to achieve desirable results. He should determine to be orderly and methodical at the very commencement of his career. Order soon becomes a habit with a business man, and by its observance he is enabled to do a hundred things that it would be impossible to accomplish if he did not go at them in the handiest and most effective manner.—[Grocers’ Criterion.