MARK TWAIN ON BUSINESS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 7 June 1901, Page 4

MARK TWAIN ON BUSINESS.

“To Succeed, Avoid my Example,” he Says.

Mark Twain has been giving some of his admirers in America it Ifisson in the art of getting oil in the World. This is what he said: —“l cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I thought I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet. and may learn. I am rat Iter inclined to believe that what troubled mo was that I got the big head early in the game. “ Some folks say that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. That’s all right—as a theory. What is the matter With loyalty to ybur*clff As iffiarly as I can understand oilier people’s methods there is one great drawback to them. You are required to work a great deal. “ Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much niore restful. My idea is that the employer should be The Busy Man and the employee the idle one. The employer should be the worried man and the employee happy onti; Aiid why hot? He getS the salary.

“M plan is to got another man to do the work for me. There’s more repose in that. What I want is repose first, last and all the time.

*T want to tell you some of my experiences in business. My first effort was about twenty-five years ago. I took hold of an invention —I don't know now what it was all about, but some one came to me and told mo that it was a good thing, and that there were lots of money in it. He persiiaded mo to iiivest £3OOO, and I lived up to iffy beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. Too rfiake a long story short I sank £BOOO in it.

“Then I took up the publication of a book. I called in a publisher and said to him : “I want you to publish this book along lines which I shall lay down. I am the employer and you are tho employee. lam going to show them some new kinks

In the Publishing Business. And I want you to draw on me for money as you go along. Which ho did. He drew on me for Then I asked him to take llio book and call it on. But he refused to do that.

'• My next adventure was with a machine for doing something or other. I knew less about that than I do about the invention: But I sank £34,000 in the business, and can’t for the life of me recollect what it was tho machine was to do.

“I was still undismayed. You sec, one of tho strong points about my business life was that 1 ncVer give up. I undertook t 6 publish Genera! Grant’s book, and made £28,000 in six months —and lost it all in the next six months. My axiom is —To succeed in business, avoid my example.”