the fact that the junior's mind, however eager, cannot produce if starved. The executive anxious to cultivate the power of initiative in himself and in those working under him, ought in justice to all concerned, to see that the necessary materials for thinking are provided. What are some of the sources of these raw materials? A noted advertising man-advertising of all businesses being one which demands originality-clips every illustration which contains a figure, a pose, a layout, or an idea of any kind that he finds stimulating. Material of value can be found in the educational trip, the late books, the trade paper, the magazine article, the conference, the new friend. "When I get hold of a man who is versed in the Word of God," said Moody, "I just pump him." John Jacob Astor gained from a loquacious immigrant the idea of that fur trade upon which his fortune was to be founded; James J. Hill, a shipping clerk at St. Paul, drew from the journals of Lewis and Clark and Irving's "Astoria" the materials which fired his imagination to be empire builder of the northwest; George Pullman, forced one night to lie awake as the bunk car in which he rode jolted along from Buffalo to Westfield, gained the experience which was to bring about a new sleeping car. The Search for Business Ideas In modern factory and office practice, suggestion box, questionnaire, and call to conference, are among the means employed in securing new ideas or new applications of old ideas. Early in his railroading career young Cassatt, late president of the Pennsylvania system, made it his business to be the most approachable of division superintendents. No man was ever more sought after by cranks and geniuses alike, with their models of automatic couplers, sleeping cars, tank ing and signaling systems, than was Cassatt. He was willing to seek through chaff to find wheat. He made it a rule, moreover, to be even more accessible to his own petty employees. Brakemen, switch tenders, trackmen, all found the door to his private office open, and their practical suggestions enabled many an innovation to reach its highest value. "Bringing this down to actual factory management," says Superintendent Field of the Illinois Steel Company, "we try to get this feeling into our men by always stimulating the initiative in them. We are ready to pay the cost of anything that any of our men makes in our line and then the patent belongs to him, we having the shop rights and he having the right to sell the patent or to receive royalty from its use anywhere else he chooses." Some executives have carried this plan so far that the thought atmosphere of the establishment has been transformed. All become co-operators in the development of new ideas. Imagination, a Quality of Empire Builders The supply of materials, however necessary, constitutes but the preliminary step in the development of a new idea. The crude materials, though nuggets in the rough, are to be refashioned under the impress of the imagination. It is true that business men have too often regarded the imagination as a faculty required only by poets, novelists, musicians, and painters. Thinking of it merely in terms of the bizarre flights of fancy that sometimes steal upon one in reverie or in sleep after eating overmuch, it is not strange that they have considered "imaginative" synonymous with "impractical," and their greatest dread has been to be called visionary. Not so with great leaders. The men who have made their lasting impress upon industry-empire builders such as Cecil Rhodes and James J. Hill, creators of new products like Cyrus McCormick and George Westinghouse, financial organ izers like J. Pierpont Morgan, founders of famous enterprises such as George Pullman, Andrew Carnegie, and George Eastman-have in every case possessed power of imagination. They saw more than other men saw. The vast expanses of territory left unoccupied, the neglected mineral deposits, the small struggling organizations with inadequate capital, or the poor and inefficient plant equipment at which these men gazed were, by the intensity of their creative imagination, transformed into those greater things to be. The solid realities which later appeared listed upon the balance sheets represented the materialization only of those mental pictures which shaped themselves before their constructive minds. Development of New Ideas The imagination creates and develops, not merely reproducing the raw materials with which the mental shelves have been stored. Its creations are often as different from the original materials as are crude metals and finished timepieces, or raw cocoons and dainty silken garments. This process of mental elaboration, the manufacture of new thought products, well deserves the serious interest of an executive. He cannot safely be too busy to think. A certain stockholder of the Standard Oil Company-so runs a story told by a president of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association was much annoyed upon glancing from his office window to the offices of the oil company across the way to observe one of its department managers day after day standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing out into the street for the greater part of his time. "Here is a man who draws a five-figure salary," thought the stockholder, "who is loafing on the job." In the end, feeling it his duty to do so, since he was a stockholder and certain his efforts would be appreciated, he communicated the matter to the Standard's acting head. "Mr. Jones," the acting head of the company addressed the stockholder with a smile, "I sincerely thank you for the interest you have shown in the maintenance of our efficiency. I appreciate the fact that, from your window, Mr. Smith appears every bit as idle as you say. "But from your window it is impossible for you to see what is going on inside of Mr. Smith's head. My experience with Mr. Smith has been such that I know it would be highly profitable to this company to hire a dozen other similar Smiths if we could get them-pay them similarly large salaries to stand with their hands in their pockets, looking out of their windows-thinking thoughts as valuable as those which Mr. Smith thinks and crystallizes." Thought as a Business Force The reply of the acting head was both good business and good psychology. The great storehouse of impressions, however received, is the subconscious. Within its mystic chambers are packed all our yesterdays. In the rearranging of these subconscious thought materials lies the possibility of a new and effective combination, the bringing forth of original conceptions. This usually is the fruit of musing and solitude. The brilliant schemes of Cecil Rhodes were in the main developed during morning rides over the mountains in South Africa. Riding alone across the deserted slopes, with the stupendous works of nature frowning down upon him, Rhodes was able to commune with himself in peace. He recognized what many a harassed executive has not yet grasped, the supreme value of an idea well matured. The brilliant minds which for centuries found in philosophy, literature, or science the intellectual element they craved are to be from now on in steadily increasing numbers attracted by the business career. For business does afford scope for the fertile intellect, and the view, long current, that the busi ness man was merely a diligent worker who at best plodded. through the day's routine without a comprehensive system, with neither imagination nor a constructive mind, must accordingly give way to the conception of the executive as creative thinker. The drudge may fret and tinker, Or labor with lusty blows, But back of him stands the thinker, The clear-eyed man who knows. Force of the engine's thrust, Strength of the sweating toiler, Greatly in thee we trust. But back of them stands the schemer, The thinker who drives things through, Back of the job-the dreamer, Who's making the dream come true. EXERCISES -BERTON BRALEY. Intelligent Observation The efficient man by no means goes about open-eyed, staring at everything, but he does observe, and observe intently, the things that concern him. The way profits are made in your particular field vitally concerns you. In working through the exercise which follows, you will secure some good suggestions and improve your power to observe in places where observation is well worth your while. List on Chart 12 twenty instances in which profits appealing to you as entirely satisfactory were made. Confine this list of course to your own vocation. In compiling it you may consult daily papers, trade papers, your associates, or any other source of information applicable in your particular occupation, and the full list need not be secured at once. Simply keep alert to how profits are being made in your field and the list after a time will be completed. Do not fill out the third column until after the list of specific instances has been compiled, since its purpose is to yield you certain general principles illustrated in the concrete instances. |