use of those already in private control is liable to be restricted. Nevertheless, all of these natural resources are going to be utilized in the future more effectively than ever before. To manage and operate them under government lease or regulation will demand greater business ability and better executive capacity than in the past, when inefficiency in management could be made good by an extra charge to the consumer. Both in reputation and in compensation the rewards will be sure and rich, although it is not likely that any aggregations of wealth such as the Rockefeller fortune will ever again come into the hands of an individual.

2. Development of Inventions

it.

John N. Willys who later was to enter a new field with great success, stood one day in 1899, looking out of a window in a Cleveland skyscraper, when he noticed a four-wheeled vehicle creeping along the street. No horse was attached to From where he stood it looked exactly like a carriage. Quoting Mr. Willys' own words in relating the incident, "I immediately said to myself, that machine has all the bicycles in the country beaten hollow-I was then in the bicycle business. I made up my mind that I would get into this new field. at the first moment possible. I investigated and found that I had seen a Winton car; but I did not then get a chance to examine it."

The resolution thus quickly made, led Mr. Willys eventually to his present place in the foremost ranks of motor car manufacturers as President of the Willys-Overland Company.

Mr. Willys is typical of men who discover, invent, or make available, new means of want-gratification.

In the field of transportation, trolley cars, steam trains and automobiles have almost superseded horses and coaches. For purposes of communication, the telephone, the typewriter, and the telegraph replace the pen and the messenger boy. In the

home, the electric light, the refrigerator, the gas stove, the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, the steam radiator, and the packages of breakfast food and bakery products, have all replaced the slower or less-efficient means.

The moving picture industry has made fortunes for scores of men. The varied forms of the phonograph have built up great industries. The automobile industry has opened the way to success for countless men.

The Ford Motor Car Company, the National Cash Register Company, the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, the American Radiator Company, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, and hundreds of other concerns based upon successful invention and now capitalized at many millions, were once without any tangible value whatever-simply ideas.

Since consumers invariably have more wants than can possibly be gratified, the inventor or the man who wishes to make an invention commercially successful, must assure himself that it satisfies some of these ungratified wants. If he does this he founds his profit-seeking enterprise upon a most secure basis.

3. Improvements in Production and Distribution

The business executive is now and will in the future be subjected to pressure exerted by the worker for a larger compensation and by the consumer for lower prices; or, what is the same thing, the consumer will demand more for what he spends. The executive must seek the solution of this problem along two chief lines: (1) by improvements in production, (2) by improvements in distribution.

The most intelligent, the most alert, the most resourceful manufacturers and dealers are going to excel in this improvement of methods and will build up big businesses for themselves. The less intelligent, the less teachable, and the too

conservative will fall behind and in the fierce struggle the competitors will unerringly align themselves, some far in the rear. With improved methods of production and distribution a certain price comes to be set for a commodity, which spells actual loss to the plodding and the unprogressive but gain to the enterprising, to whom the selling price still allows a comfortable profit. Their use of improved methods gives them a lower cost and a wider margin for profit.

4. Fluctuations in Values

Another opportunity for business gain is found in the fact that practically every commodity with which.the business man has to deal-wheat, cotton, oil, merchandise, metals, machinery, real estate, building materials, labor-fluctuates in price from year to year and even from day to day.

Such variations delight the shrewd bargainer since he thereby sees an opening for that oft-used principle of his, "buy low and sell high."

"The only time I ever saw John Rockefeller enthusiastic," said an early acquaintance in commenting upon Mr. Rockefeller's ability to drive a good bargain, "was when a report came in from the creek that his buyer had secured a cargo of oil at a figure much below the market price. He bounded from his chair with a shout of joy, danced up and down, hugged me, threw up his hat and acted so like a madman that I have never forgotten it."

The industrial history of America for decades has been characterized by a series of alternating periods of prosperity and depression, which, despite certain highly commendable efforts to provide against them, doubtless will continue in the future. Such periods of prosperity and depression, whether accompanied by wars or peace treaties, droughts or bounteous. crops, easy money or financial stringency, result in the upheavals which profit-seekers heretofore have utilized to their

advantage. Whether he deals in real estate, securities, grain or foreign exchange, the business man bases his operations upon the prevailing price level of the commodities in which he is interested. He estimates the future in terms of a changed price level and either buys or sells as the result of his estimate.

5. Supplying Known Wants

In books on salesmanship and among groups of salesmen spinning yarns in hotel lobbies the "prospect" is often conceived as of jelly-fish mentality, it being the salesman's task to trick him deftly into buying something he does not want. A moment's reflection will show that most of the selling in the world is the sale of things that people want, are greatly interested in, and in fact must have. The great businesses of the world are the production and sale of necessary commodities to consumers who are anxious to get them.

All of us spend the largest proportions of our income in supplying ourselves with the things we must have. Each human being requires food, shelter, clothes, fuel and light. These are the great necessities of life. Most of us make our living and what measure of fortune we can by producing or selling something to supply these diverse wants. People in the future are going to demand these same things in a fuller measure and of better quality, and all who desire business openings can find them in the production, the manufacture, and the distribution, not of the things people do not want, but of the things they do want. Here we have again the idea of service, which constitutes in business the great, never ceasing opportunity.

Needs and the Law of Service

In the location of opportunity it is significant to note that the leaders of business today, however different the particular commodity with which each deals, usually proceed upon one

central principle. Men such as John Wanamaker and Marshall Field in merchandising, Frank A. Vanderlip and Otto Kahn among bankers, and Henry Ford and W. L. Douglas among manufacturers win their large profits through superior service. Upon the basis solely of such superior service, they have been able to keep friends, patrons, and employees; to build up strong, enduring business organizations; and to shape for themselves notable careers as gainers of profits, in the best sense of that word.

"This is the service the new business man now can render his day and his people," declares E. St. Elmo Lewis, "create a greater business in the service of the people."

The Many Roads Upward

The opportunities for profits, indicated in a general way by the foregoing paragraphs, are exceedingly numerous. In fact, the thirty largest fortunes of America, according to a tabulation recently made by Forbes' Magazine, had as their chief source, sixteen different businesses. The road to profits obviously is not a narrow, hedged-in path; it is not, indeed, a path at all, but a broad highway along which many types of vehicle may pass.

"Do not hesitate to engage in any legitimate business," says Andrew Carnegie, "for there is no business in America, I do not care what, which will not yield a fair profit if it receives the unremitting, exclusive attention, and all the capital of capable, industrious men."

The Business Man's Task

The Great War has revolutionized business methods and has inculcated certain business truths that will mean a permanently changed business order. German efficiency, which before the war was rapidly possessing itself of the trade, the manufacturing, and the financing of the world will not find