its former rivals, France, Great Britain, and America, unmindful of the new order. Purged of many an old inefficiency the Allied nations will go forward upon a new basis. If we are to play our part as a great industrial nation, the demands on those who aspire to lead will not slacken. The business men of the future, the producers and distributors of commodities, will have man-sized jobs laid out for them, and the half-trained, uninformed slackers who are not ready to meet the new conditions will be crowded aside with scant ceremony. Alertness a Business Asset The large gains, the conspicuous careers wrought out in our country in the past and to be attained in the future by the young executives of the day, have resulted or will result, from change in conditions, from the exploitation of new projects by men of intelligence and daring originality. The average grade of ability under normal conditions will receive its conservative reward, but the executive not satisfied with that must needs cultivate something new and unusual; must take advantage of changes and new opportunities as they offer. Alertness to discover and seize opportunities at the right time constitutes a most valuable business asset. A Dayton merchant, suffering from a nervous breakdown due to overwork and worry in attempting to keep tabs on the details of his retail store, noticed in the engine room of the ship which was taking him to Europe a device which recorded the number of revolutions of the propeller shaft. Hundreds of other passengers had observed the same device without any particular consequence, but in the mind of Jacob Ritty this question at once arose, "Why not construct a machine that will record each coin put in the till?" Hurrying home to Dayton, he set to work with his brother, a skilled mechanic, and evolved the first cash register. The crude yet novel machine soon afterwards came to the attention of a second alert intellect, in the person of a smalltown merchant whose store was located some distance from Ritty's tiny factory at Dayton. Impressed by the vast possibilities of the device, this John H. Patterson took over the patents and founded the now world-famous National Cash Register Company. The thousands of visitors at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 considered the bicycle exhibited there merely a curiosity; Colonel Pope recognized in it the basis of a new industry and he returned to Hartford to enter upon his notable career as a manufacturer. The changes which took place in the sulphur-cured indiarubber accidentally dropped by Charles Goodyear upon a stove, meant nothing to his good-natured friends; to Goodyear it was a revelation—the long-sought process of treating rubber gum. The streets black with telephone wires were for years in plain sight of thousands, yet it remained for Theodore Vail to dream of wires underground and at Attleboro to begin his first experiments. That wires should be underground now appears obvious but persons fifty years from now will wonder why persons today overlooked so many things to them equally obvious. Though they travel the same road together, men do not see the same things. As Russell Sage dryly remarked, “Some people never see opportunity in anything and they never get along." The explanation which these ne'er-do-wells often advance is that opportunity knocks but once upon each man's door and, should he prove unresponsive, passes along never to return; they, unfortunately, failed to recognize the presence, hence their present plight. Of the many absurd ideas which encumber the human mind this deserves high rank as the worst. Since business conditions are continually chang ing, the opportunity for an alert mind to seize upon enterprises at the psychological moment never is closed. Pioneer versus Followers The pioneer, with a mind alert to the significance of that which he sees, continually keeps tilling and harvesting in the most fertile fields, while the follower either contents himself with the former's once worked fields or, having once secured handsome returns in a certain venture, continues persistently in this same activity, oblivious of the fact that the field is worked out. The profit-maker keeps his facilities always mobilized, ready to move in whatever direction gain calls. Rockefeller's early success as a monopolist was founded upon railway rebates, but as soon as the independent refiners thought to best him by inducing a pipe line, he promptly eschewed railroads and the Standard was soon pumping oil to New York. Commodore Vanderbilt believed in sailing vessels, but after a time he saw the superiority of steam and turned to steamboats; and later, beginning to feel the effect of rail transportation, he sold his beautiful steamers and reinvested his money in the rusty iron rails and wheezy little locomotives of the competing railways. The Commodore was then an old man and his opinion of railroads prior thereto had been scarcely printable, but these things did not keep him from the profitable path. The Power of Initiative The profit maker is a cultivator of the new, a herald of things to come. The rapidity of his innovations outdistances competitors. Bankrupt railroads, overcapitalized factories, problematic inventions, or offerings of novelty shoes and spring hats he evaluates in terms of the future. "We take pleasure in the success of everybody in busi ness," says John Wanamaker, "and even when instant duplication of our methods is attempted we hope that tomorrow we shall be as fresh as today, and shall be in the future as in the past attempting to do what has hitherto been unattempted." The present is obvious, and as such is usually found to have been already exploited. Even a new plan, in its day considered highly original, assures no permanent hold; competitors abound and their advances gradually undermine the prosperity of any stationary concern. Only through initiative, the power to produce new ideas continually, is permanent advantage possible. They copied all they could follow, But they couldn't follow my mind; The Fresh Viewpoint The new idea is a magnet drawing profits to its possessor. It attracts unto itself money, men, and materials; expresses its presence in unique designs, prompt deliveries, low costs and satisfactory service; and, the real soul of the organization, determines the onward career of office, store, or factory. The organization manned by creative thinkers is founded upon a rock. The great value of ideas to men in business is coming to be more fully appreciated. The executives in the front ranks, in fact, are even now past the stage of discussion, and instead are intent upon the best methods of systematically cultivating new ideas. An excellent first suggestion is offered by the history of inventions. The cotton-gin was the work not of a southern planter, as might have been expected, but of a Connecticut schoolmaster; the idea of the Jenney car coupler was evolved from the brain of an illiterate French-Canadian, who knew more about brands of whiskey than railroads; the Bessemer process was formulated by a man who had no connection with the iron and steel trade, and knew little or nothing of metallurgy. "Persons wholly unconnected with a particular business," declared Bessemer in explaining how he had entered upon his career untrammeled by notions, "are the men who make all the great inventions of the age." The outsider's fresh viewpoint accounts for this paradoxical fact. Men engaged in a particular business are, too commonly, mere diligent workers, plodders who perform their daily routine without a comprehensive system, without inventive or constructive ability-sterile workers who lack vision. These workers in a rut cannot see anything but the day's work ahead. In an executive position they are digging their business graves. In order to seek out, attain and utilize the fresh viewpoint for himself, the executive must keep himself free from entangling masses of detail. Vacations, rest periods, and change of occupation keep a man fit and provide the conditions under which the development of new ideas is encouraged. In addition, he should by conference, by discussion and similar methods, get the opinions of others on his problems. An open-minded attitude at these conferences and elsewhere will yield a rich harvest. At times, it may be worth while to get in an auditor or efficiency expert to examine and report anything that may be wrong or lacking. If a new man is taken on, his impressions before he settles into the existing routine will often supply a valuable corrective. The Raw Material of Ideas It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the mind cannot shape up new ideas unless it is supplied with appropriate raw material. Corporation heads oftentimes complain that their junior executives are sterile, but they do not appreciate |