One secret of success in business—the secret, in fact, of success on a large scale—is to conceive of it as a matter of principles, not merely as a series of transactions. There are great merchants as there are great statesmen, and there are small merchants as there are small politicians, and the difference is very much the same in both professions. The small politician works by the day, and sees only the one small opportunity before him, the small merchant does the same thing—he is looking for the next dollar. The statesman, on the other hand, is master of the situation, because he understands the general principles which control events; this knowledge enables him to deal with large questions and to shape the future. The great merchant does the same thing, his business is not a mere money-getting affair, not a mere matter of barter, but a science and an art; he studies the general laws of trade, watches the general condition of the country, investigates present needs, foresees future wants, and adapts his business to the broad conditions of time and place. He puts as much brains into his work as does the statesman, and he ends by being not a money getter, but a large minded and capable man. An eminently successful business man, of statesmanlike quality, said the other day that the more he understood of life the more clearly he saw that it was all done on business principles. By which he meant, not only that the universe stands for the dollar, but that the universe is governed by unvarying laws, that promptness, exactness, thoroughness and honesty are wrought into its very fibre. On these business principles all life is conducted, if not by men, at least by that power which is behind man. It ought to be the ambition of every young man to treat his business from the point of the statesman, and not from that of the politician. |