WHAT IS SUCCESS?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5466, 26 August 1929, Page 3

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

, BRAINS OR MERE LUCK ? i ’ Entirely too much stress is put on the making of money, according to f Julius Rosenwald, of Sears, Roebuck ’ and Company. That does not require . brains, he goes on to say. Some of J the biggest fools he knows are the i wealthiest. As a matter of fact, Mr Rosenwald believes that success is 95 , per cent, ability. He goes on : I “Take my own case. I know that , there are any number of men in my p employ who could run my business just as well as I can. They did not I get the breaks—that’s the only differ- , ence between them and me.” ' These widely quoted remarks do not altogether meet with the editorial approval of “The Iron Age” (New York), which comments on them as , follows : “Emanating from a business leader, so successful and so lovable, they - should go unchallenged, for it sterns to us that they are essentially erron- • eous and mischievous. If financial I success were chiefly a matter of luck, there would be strong grounds for the . suftaxes that governments so savage- : ly levy on large incomes, for the voraciousness of unionised labour, an l for . the levelling processes of Socia.istic ' doctrine. This re indeed the very net gation of the theory that men get , what they earn or carr what they get. [ “To almost all rules there are ex- . ceptions. It is undeniable that wln- : ning of the Calcutta Sweepstakes is a , consequence of luck. It is also un- . deniable that in the romantic days of the mining industry some bonanzas were discovered by pure luck. We j may sugest. however, that persons , who have stumbled into fortunes in such ways usually have not had brains enough to retain them, which t rather implies that brains do not tell. “There are not a few men who have derived fortunes from the exploitation of a single idea, which after revelation and development has appeared so simple as to be almost ridiculous, anyway, obvious. Even the foi--tunes that have come out of the business of Sears, Roebuck and Company may be so viewed. “Bit what of the brains that conceived the idea, the toil and perseverance in promoting it! Indeed it ! requires brains to recognise when opportunity knocks. American industry and American industrial fortunes have not grown big out of happy 1 thoughts and easy going. ; “An occasional fool may become rich by luck. A genius, like Einstein, may prefer to disregard wealth and give himself to science and the enjoy- ' ment of fame. Among exceptions 1 there are gradations from such extremes ; but after all there are relatively few variants in the great scheme of nnure. And as a broad generalisation it may be assumed that a man's earring capacity is a rough measure of his ability.