HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 17 January 1913, Page 3

HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS

AN AM IiItICAN'S RECIPE

Yon own all the to-morrows in the world!

Ikoken, fii spirited, discouraged, nerveless to-day ? To-niarrow now empires will bo builded, now iortunes made, now glories won. New prospects will he located, ne.w friends made, new customers made of the. friendships formed a few days ago. There is n« end to the opportunity for success that lies in to-morrow, writes the ''Business Philosopher." A college professor is fond ot saying that with -preparation, a fair amount of brains, and sufficient toil, any man ran become a millionaire. Some o.f us would not go so far as that, others believe every word of it.

Granted that wo have as much cerebral matter a« the next man, to" amass a million dollars we must, be prepared to seize every opportunity that (.••■esses our path. Opportunity crosses more' than once, in spite of. what the. late Senator Jngalls said about it. Preparation consists in learning ;how to know Opportunity when we see it.

For instance, a young lawyer practising in C'vyn hong a County, Ohio, whenever he had a client to practise, on, -i-pent much time in the court rooms, aoxl noticed that counsel read decisions from the law reports. They read the. number of the book, the page and the paragraph or two pertinent to the case in hand. He advised with himself, and the upshot of the case was that his citations were not read, hut quoted from memory. The learned judges looked at him over theii spectacles, the professional jurymen gasped. The judges sent for the hooks. The young lawyer grasped the opportunity of making an impression, for himself as well as for his client. He recognised the tact that- a statement made from memory, and made positi\ch, l ures in deeper, hits harder, tlnn a quotation read from a hook. The effect on the jurymen was one hundred per cent. good. They reasoned, subconsciously, that ii the young man knew the law well enough to quote from me.mory he must know something about the facts which they were sworn to judge. The memory task the young lawyer set him sell was easy of accomplishment when his cases were few. As his practise increased, his ability to memorise grew with it. To-day, men say 'he can quote law, report number, page, and paragraph, after one reading. Imagine the effect on a .-prospect if the salesman gave him from memory extracts from testimonial letters, paragraphs from the catalogue, whole sections of intensified selling argument 1

A mail may make a million dollars in any line of honest endeavour, but only when lie finds joy in his work'. There never was a rich man who did not find joy in the labour that made him rich. When the joy runs out of the doing/ the profits run with it. All of us remember the story of Tom Sawyer, created by the immortal Mark* Twain. • Remember how Tom hated the job of whitewashing the fence? The boy was a born promoter. He painted the joy of whitewashing so vividly to his companions that they paid him in pennies, marbles, and fops for the pleasure of wielding the brush. They found fun in the task, were willing to pay for doing it. Never in a million years would Tom Sawyer have made a good whitewash artist. Wo don't know what happened to .him after lie was twenty-one, but it is a good guess that he promoted a railroad or two. Joy in doing? .Fun out"of a business or profession.? When an actor '.has'a day off, does he 'spend it in the country? Does he go fishing? Does he hie himself to the golf course? Not if there is a theatre in town. Edison works eighteen hours a day in' : his -laboratory. He-puts in his play :time and his work timo in the same room.

■'Pleasure is work? What does the copyreader or editor do with his play hours? Eighty per cent, of them are spent in .slippered feet with a. -book under his nose. He robs his sleeping time to enjoy the work of others in his. own line.

Some men have made a- million dollars by following other men. Mo.s) fortunes have been made by charting a new course. The doers aro the men who value precedent because it tells them what not to do. The doers,believe that "precedent is something to bo broken," not preserved. The arch enemy of progress is precedent. 'lf precedent had never been broken we would never have ha-d the adding machine, the computing wale, .the phonograph, to say nothing of the .steam engine, the telegraph, 'or the airship. . The man who makes a million dollars is the man who does things' differently, who gets under the hide, who sometimes startles the people with whom he is in close contact. Do you. know spch a man? Mark kim well, for, if he has a fair anw ■■ ~ of brains, sufficient preparation to recognise opportunity, ambition, and determination, he will carve his :uamo high up on the wall where, the ■names of famous men are inscribed.