DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 16, 9 April 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

WHAT PEOPLE WANT (Copyright , 1927.) of life’s little jokes is that John Milton got fifty dollars for “Paradise Lost” and Anne Nichols gets five million for “Abie’s Irish Rose. Everybody admits that “Paradise Lost” is a great work of art. It will be spoken of by the learned when Abie and Rosie are forgotten “these many years.” _ , . . But the basis upon which financial rewards are distributed is tne degree to which a product fills an immediate want of the people. More people can laugh than can read a work of art. More people wan. to laugh than to read a work of art. Hence and wherefore Miss Mcnos takes her place as a star account-holder in a New’ York bank. With the right or wrong of public taste this article has nothing to go. The point is that the road to financial success is supplying a pu " an In the south of the United States there lives a gentleman named Amedio Obici. He is known as “The Peanut King of the World ing with a pushcart peanut stand he worked his way to the presidency the five-million-dollar Planters’ Nut and Chocolate Company, in which B the principal stockholder. . , To Mr. Obici recently came an inquiring reporter, who desired to iedi the secret of his success. His reply began with honesty and ended w r ith wisdom. “My success,” he said, “like every other man’s, is due to luck, then, you have to have what people want or they wron’t buy it. The last words explain the first. Luck usually visits those who have what people want. The secret of most successes—whether made at drawing a conucp acting on the stage, inventing a new machine, selling a breakfast t * writing an article —is the same. It is producing what the people want. icingThey may not know they ’'’ant it —that is the work of ad but unless the product meets a 1 need the resulting success be very pronounced.