Dollars and Sense.

by Col. Wm. C. Hunter.

Groundwork

When you cut a melon, your friends will come with eager mouths and sit under your shade tree and help you eat it. Few of these friends would respond to your call for help when you were working in the hot sun raising that melon.

Many people accept the dividends and benefits of friendship but give you a cold shoulder when called upon for a.s.sessments of friendship.

The world is full of young men whose objective is snaps. They are looking all the time for what they can get and not what they can give.

To forge ahead, you must give value received. You can't draw out all the time.

The employe must do what he is paid to do and "then some," for it is this "then some" or plus that gets your salary raised.

The employer and employe must realize that each must make profit. It is because there are so many ingrates and so many four flushers that so few succeed.

This book will be welcomed by those who are square, ambitious and patient. It is not theory. It is not preaching. These chapters will be old friends to you, and you may read a few minutes or a few hours. You may read and re-read as often as you wish, for you will always find some new truth impressed on you every time you read.

Keep this book, carry it with you, and you will be benefitted.

Worry and fear will fade and peace and courage will grow within you the more you study these pages.

The writer has "been at it" for 32 years. He has had successes, failures, joys, sorrows, and experienced the pa.s.sions, the problems, the difficulties you have experienced.

Since the age of ten years he has been upon his own resources and the 32 years since then have been years of study, working and playing, all blended into a happy life.

The jolts, set backs, sorrows, worries, fears and discouragements are the things which made him strong. They were experiences.

Smooth sailing doesn't bring out the stuff one is made of. It takes shadows to make sunlight appreciated.

It takes reverses to make success. It takes hard knocks to polish you.

This is a book of experiences, not one of theories.

There is no attempt to make this a literary effort. All the writer hopes for or cares to do is to truthfully state facts and experiences in plain language. Study the thought rather than the expression.

It is Sense the writer wants to express rather than nonsense.

The writer is happy to say that the previous editions sold rapidly and his friends not only read, but pa.s.s the word along.

The way to get happiness is to make others happy and the present of one of these books to a friend or employe is a quick way to get happiness.

Let us go along together and consider some of the problems which we all have to face in our business as well as our social life. A volume could be written on each chapter. But volumes are tiresome and herein you will find net values which are the result of boiling down.

So now we have the groundwork of this book. We understand each other.

Simply take these truths for their evident worth. You won't agree with the writer in all things, of course not. If, however, you get one truth that will help you, then you have been repaid for reading this book and the writer has been repaid for writing it.

Learn to Say No.

Look over the history of the thousands who have failed in business, and you will find in nearly every instance the failure was due to an inability to say No.

People come to us under various guises and ask us to do things which in our better judgment we had rather not do, and too many have not the backbone to say No.

We are led to invest in mining stocks and to embark in precarious enterprises because we cannot say No.

We endorse notes and go security for our friends, not because we want to but because we cannot say No.

There is a cla.s.s of "good fellows" who are after us to join them in physical pleasures, the foregoing of which would be better for us physically, financially and mentally. Too many join them because they cannot say No.

It is rarely a man goes off deliberately and gets drunk. The lone drunk is usually the result of sorrow, sudden financial blow or a hard jolt of some sort.

The man who gets drunk generally does so because he cannot say No when bibulous friends press him to take a drink.

The ability to say No, to refrain from going with the crowd, to decline to go down stream is, more than any other one thing in this life, the mark of a strong character.

The one who can say No is going to succeed. Temporarily he may feel ashamed; he may find it hard to withstand the jibes and jeers and criticism of his friends for refusing to join them in things he should not do.

Our old friend--the law of compensation--comes in here, for in proportion as a man has the ability to say No, who has the courage of his convictions, whose duty is to his body and his family before the temptations that surround him, so in proportion as there are few such individuals these individuals stand out as marked successes.

The manager of one of the biggest breweries in the United States has not tasted liquor of any kind in the last twenty years. Surely this man shows his courage, for his action in face of his occupation is a supreme test of backbone and ability to say No.

The embezzler does not start out to do wrong. Some friends want to borrow money or someone needs financial aid temporarily, and, either at the request of friends or because the individual has something he wishes to purchase and has not the patience to wait, he borrows from the firm by means of "the ticket in the drawer" plan. He repeats the operation frequently until his conscience is dulled, and he gets the habit. Some day he wakes up to find he has several tickets in the drawer, and resorts to extreme measures, trying to beat the races, or to win money by gambling on stocks or grain.

One day he finds he is in a d.i.c.kens of a fix. He sees no way out of it.

He takes more money and skips out, only to be caught later on and made to suffer, and all this because he could not say No to temptation.

Learn to say No. Set your jaws firmly and say No. The friends who go back on you and criticize you for saying No to the things that are hurtful to you are unworthy of the name of friends, and you can very well get along without them.

Friends who ask you to do the things you should not do are the very ones who are of no service to you in time of need.

The individual who says No regardless of the flings and taunts that are cast at him is the one who eventually makes a success.

Character counts above all things in the business world. The banker extends credit on character oftener than we imagine. The banker knows how to say No.

A man's credit and character are most important factors in business, and many a man without security has attained magnificent success through untiring energy, ability, character and courage enough to say No.

In proportion as you grow strong and unhesitating in saying No, the temptations and opportunities to say Yes will lessen in number.

Exercise your back bone and your jaw bone, so you can say No and stick to it.