“Wrecks of the world are of two kinds,” said Elbert Hubbard. “Those who have nothing that society wants, and those who do not know how to get their goods into the front window.”

The way to succeed in salesmanship is to get your goods into the front window and hustle for all you are worth. Hard work and grit open the door to the Success firm.

Two college students started out to sell copies of the same book. After some weeks in the field one wrote to headquarters as an excuse for his poor business that “everything had been trying to keep him down of late.” The weather had been so bad he could not get out a great deal of the time; then everybody was talking “hard times,” and no money, and making all sorts of excuses for not buying. He said he was so disgusted and discouraged that he saw nothing for it but to give up canvassing as a bad job.

The other young man, canvassing in similar territory, sent in his report about the same time. This is what he wrote: “In spite of bad weather and the fact that everybody is trying to hedge on account of the war scare and the general business depression I have had a banner week, and my commissions were over eighty dollars. I get used to this ‘hard times and no money,’ and ‘can’t afford it’ talk, and I just sail right in and overwhelm all these objections with my arguments. I make the people I talk to feel that it would be almost wicked to let the opportunity pass for securing a book, the reading of which has doubled and trebled the efficiency of a multitude of men and women and has been the turning point in hundreds of careers. I have made them feel that it will be cheap at almost any price, and that I am doing them a great favor in making it possible for them to secure this ambition-arousing book.”

This young man sold, on the average, to eight people out of ten he called upon during the week.

A traveling salesman for a big concern got it into his head that his territory out through the West was played out. His orders were shrinking, and he told his employers that the territory had simply been worked to a finish, that there was no use in staying in it any longer. His sales manager, however, knew the section well, and doubted the man’s glib statement. He put a young fellow in his place who had had very little experience, but who was a born hustler, full of energy, ambition and enthusiasm. On his first trip he more than doubled his predecessor’s record. He said he saw nothing to indicate a played-out route, and was confident that business would increase as he became better acquainted with the territory.

The fact was that, not the territory, but the man was played out. The older salesman was not willing to forego his comforts, his pleasures, to hustle for business. He was not willing to travel across the country in bad weather on the chance of getting an order in a small town. He preferred to remain in the Pullman cars, to go to the larger towns and sit around in hotel lobbys, to take things easy, to go to the theaters instead of hunting up new customers and making friends for the house. He wanted his “dead” territory changed, because he had no taste for hustling. His successor did not see any lack of life in that “played-out” route because he was “a live wire.” The trouble was not in the territory; it was in the man.

At an agricultural convention while discussing the slope of land which was best suited to a certain kind of fruit tree, an old farmer was called upon to express his opinion. He got up and said, “the slope of the land don’t make so much difference as the slope of the man.” It isn’t the slope of the territory that counts so much in selling as the slope of the salesman; that is everything. In every business it is always a question of the sort of a man behind the proposition. It is the slope of the man, his grit, his stick-to-it-iveness, that count most.

No matter how letter perfect you may be in the technique of salesmanship, or how well posted on all the rules of effective procedure, if you lack certain qualities you never will make a first-class salesman.

If you lack grit, industry, application, perseverance; if you lack determination and that bull-dog grip which never lets go or knows when it is beaten; if you lack sand, you will peter out. Having these qualities you will overcome many handicaps.

I have known a little sawed-off dwarf of a salesman to wade into a prospect and, through sheer grit, get an order where the ordinary salesman, with good physical appearance, would have failed.

This fellow said that grit had been his only capital in life; that when he found he was so handicapped by his size and his ugly features that he would probably be a failure and a nobody in the world, he just made up his mind he would not only overcome every one of his handicaps, but that he would be a big success in his line. He did everything he had resolved to do, and through sheer force of grit “made good.” He had paid the price of success, and won out, as will every one who is willing to pay the price.

Only the weakling prates about “luck,” a “pull,” or “favoritism,” or any other backstairs to success. Your success and your luck are determined by yourself and by no other. We are the masters of our destiny. We get just what we want. To be sure, all of us wish for a lot of things; we would like very much to have them, but we don’t really want them, or we would straightway set to work and try very hard by every means in our power to get them. Many of us wish for a position worth anywhere from ten thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars a year, but we want to get it without much effort, and to hold it with still less effort. What we really want is success without effort, an easy job at the highest market price, like the cook pictured in a recent cartoon, applying for a place. Her first question is: “And what’s the wages, mum?” “Oh, I always pay whatever a person’s worth,” answers the employer. “No, thank ye, mum. I never works for as little as that,” replies the disgusted would-be employee.

Let us remember that there is no easiest way to success in any business or profession. We are here to develop ourselves to the highest point of our ability; to be the broadest, ablest, most helpful men and women we can be, and this is only possible through the assiduous cultivation of our highest faculties. We can only grow and progress through self-development. No patent method has yet been discovered by which a man or woman can be developed from the outside.

Abraham Lincoln tells us, “The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any one wishes to hinder him.”

Hudson Maxim, the famous inventor, has formulated ten success rules, the essence of which are, study and work. He makes two vital assertions: 1. “Never look for something for nothing; make up your mind to earn everything, and remember that opportunity is the only thing that any one can donate you without demoralizing you and doing you an injury.” 2. “Man must eliminate from his mind any belief that the world owes him a living.”

Now, some people differ with Mr. Maxim on this last point. They believe the world does owe each one of us a living. If they are right, it is pleasant to think that the world is very ready to pay this debt, when we come around to collect it in the right way. If we can do any one thing superbly, no matter how humble it may be, we shall find ourselves in demand. The world will most willingly pay its indebtedness to us.

Men and women who have won distinction in every business and profession are unanimous in their agreement as to two cardinal points in the achievement of success—Work and Grit.

The Honorable Thomas Pryor Gore, the blind Senator of Oklahoma, who raised himself from a poor, blind boy to be an influential member of the United States Senate, has this to say on the secret of pushing to the front: “A fixed and unalterable purpose, pursued under all circumstances, in season and out of season, with no shadow of turning, is the best motive power a man can have. I have sat in physical darkness for twenty-seven years, and if I have learned anything it is that the dynamics of the human will can overcome any difficulty.”

Here, indeed, is encouragement for every youth in this land of opportunity. Think of a poor, blind boy, unaided, achieving such distinction as Mr. Gore has won! Think of a blind Milton writing the greatest epic in the world’s literature! Think of a Beethoven, stone deaf, overcoming the greatest handicap a composer could have, and raising himself to the distinction of being one of the greatest composers the world has known! One of this wonderful man’s sayings is well worth keeping in mind by every young man struggling with difficulties: “I will grapple with fate; it shall never drag me down.”

It is well also to remember this truth: “Usually the work that is required to develop talent is ten times that necessary for ordinary commonplace success.” Men naturally brainy, or with some great gift, have to work most assiduously to achieve big results. Without untiring perseverance, industry, grit, the courage to get up and press on after repeated failures, the historic achievers of the world would never have won out in their undertakings.

Columbus said that it was holding on three days more that discovered the New World; that is, it was holding on three days after even the stoutest hearts would have turned back that brought him in sight of land.

Tenacity of purpose is characteristic of all men who have accomplished great things. They may lack other desirable traits, may have all sorts of peculiarities, weaknesses, but the quality of persistence, clear grit, is never absent from the man who does things. Drudgery cannot disgust him, labor cannot weary him, hardships cannot discourage him. He will persist no matter what comes or goes, because persistence is part of his nature.

More young men have achieved success in life with grit as capital, than with money capital to start with. The whole history of achievement shows that grit has overcome the direst poverty; it has been more than a match for lifelong invalidism.

After all, what do all the other accomplishments and personal decorations amount to if a man lacks the driving wheel, grit, which moves the human machine. A man has got to have this projectile force or he will never get very far in the world. Grit is a quality which stays by a man when every other quality retreats and gives up.

For the gritless every defeat is a Waterloo, but there is no Waterloo for the man who has clear grit, for the man who persists, who never knows when he is beaten. Those who are bound to win never think of defeat as final. They get up after each failure with new resolution, more determination than ever to go on until they win.

Have you ever seen a man who had no give-up in him, who could never let go his grip whatever happened, who, every time he failed, would come up with greater determination than ever to push ahead? Have you ever seen a man who did not know the meaning of the word failure, who, like Grant, never knew when he was beaten, who cut the words “can’t,” and “impossible,” from his vocabulary, the man whom no obstacles could down, no difficulty phase, who was not disheartened by any misfortune, any calamity? If you have, you have seen a real man, a conqueror, a king among men.

As we look around at other men, enjoying the good things of life, basking in the sunshine of success, let us remember that they didn’t get their place in the sun by wishing and longing for it. They didn’t get to Easy Street by the road of Inertia. When you are tempted to envy those people, and long to have a “pull” or some one to give you a “boost,” just call to mind this jingle:

There is no royal road to anything that is worth having. Only work and grit will do the trick. As J. Pierpont Morgan says, “Hard, honest, intelligent work will land any young man at the top.”

The great business world is always on the hunt for the man who can do things a little better than they have been done before, the man who can deliver the goods, the man who can manage a little better, the man who is a little shrewder, a little more scientific, a little more accurate, a little more thorough; it is always after the man who can bring a little better brain, a little better training to his job.

With our constantly widening national interests, our enormously expanding trade, the demand for A1 salesmen is ever on the increase. The young man who is not satisfied with the ordinary required equipments for salesmanship, but who will add to this a thorough knowledge of modern languages, especially those most used in commercial intercourse—German, French and Spanish—will not have very great difficulty in finding his place in the sun.

The making—or the marring—of your life is in your own hands. “The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.” Success is on sale in the world market place. All who are willing to pay the price can buy it. In the final analysis, success in salesmanship, as in everything else, is simply a matter of “paying the price.”