money a single thought." The financing of the project was to him a comparatively simple problem. The finding of the right kind of man to handle it was the difficult matter.

Sufficient Capital

The third essential, sufficient capital, is the one with which we are here primarily concerned. The reader, it is assumed, has his profit-making project in mind; he is thoroughly convinced he can manage it; but where can the necessary funds be secured? This is the problem to which the next chapters are devoted.

CHAPTER XX

THRIFT AS A WORKING POLICY

Your ship can't come in unless you send one out.

Financial Preparedness

The number of persons who believe that they could make a fortune if only they "had the money" is astonishingly large. Opportunities appear; they are detected, but owing to financial unpreparedness they cannot be grasped. The difficulty and how certain men with such notable success have solved it, appears well illustrated in the following incident drawn from the early career of H. C. Frick, the "coke king" and multimillionaire.

In company with two partners, Rist and Tinstman, Frick had early engaged in the coke business. The panic of 1873, however, which littered the country with financial wrecks, plunged the firm into bankruptcy and the two partners very much desired to liquidate their holdings. Although young, relatively inexperienced, and already burdened with more debt than capital, Frick so believed in the future of the coke business that he sought out Pittsburgh's principal banker and staggered him with the size of the loan he wished to negotiate.

Mr. Forbes, in "Men Who Are Making America," tells the story as follows:

Judge Mellon sent a man (an uncle of W. E. Corey) to Broad Ford to investigate the character and caliber of this daring Napoleon of finance. Instead of finding H. C. Frick to be one of the leading citizens of the place, living in sumptuous style and owning a wealth of property, the investigator discovered him to be merely a youth of 24, employed as

a bookkeeper and living, not in a mansion, but in two small
rooms over a drug store. Inquiry elicited the facts that the
young man was held in the highest regard, that his industry
and ability were the common talk of the place, and that his
handling of the new coke concern had proved both able and
successful. Judge Mellon, instead of feeling disappointed
over the humble circumstances of the would-be borrower,
decided that a young man of such enterprise, talent, and
courage, with horse sense enough to live on a few dollars
a week in order to increase his capital, deserved to be helped.
So the loan was granted.

Not only did Frick buy out his two partners, but he gath-
ered in other properties at bankruptcy figures. Frick's readi-
ness to buy or lease other coal lands and coke properties-
the whole coke industry amounted to only a few hundred
ovens-caused the townspeople to look upon him as a
lunatic. . . .

The return of financial calm found Frick the sole owner of Frick & Company. Output rose above fifty tons a day and the price went from ninety cents to above two dollars; later (1879-80), when the boom set in, coke soared to above five dollars a ton, and every day the sun rose Frick sold over $30,000 worth of the fuel and pocketed a net profit of over $20,000.

Building Solidly

The business man with his enterprise under way needs, even after his own powers of brain and physique have been developed to their utmost, certain reinforcements if he is to attain a really notable career. He has to utilize capital for this reason. Inevitably the alert, forward-looking executive sooner or later is a seeker of funds.

The seeker of funds in the person of H. C. Frick was a man who had thoroughly mastered his financial A B C's. He had learned, never to be forgotten, the essential rudiments of the financier's language and he had practiced finance's basic virtues. Those whom he approached for funds, recognized that he knew full well the value of a dollar. The business man uses the dollar as the unit that measures his capital. It stands as the measure of his plant, his equipment, his stock-in-trade,

his armament for the competition of commerce. If he does not realize its value, its power, its force, he will not know how to use it, how to handle it, how to care for it. Unless some other has earned it for him, he is not likely, in such case, ever to have much to use, and so will fail to hold his own, for lack of tools to work with, weapons to fight with, and capital with which to command success.

American Habits of Waste

The basis of financial power is laid in those elementary habits of prudent spending and wise saving, which boys should, though unfortunately they do not with anything like the thoroughness desired, receive as an essential part of their early training. Prevalent habits too commonly are opposed to such soundness of financial training.

"Americans are the most reckless spenders in the world," says the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, Julius Rosenwald. "The average man in this country is spending every dollar he makes and maybe more."

$500,000,000 annually is the waste represented by our smoking factory chimneys.

$30,000,000 worth of waste paper, approximately, is burned in the United States every year.

$2,500,000 is spent for suppers, theaters, cabs, liquors, tips, and the like, in New York City on New Year's Eve. Since every community has its counterpart of New York's "Great White Way," this extravagance and folly is widespread.

The value of thrift during the Great War was accentuated among citizens of every belligerent country. Yet the struggle for a higher plane of living and the need for capital are with us always; we need no war to teach us to practice the commandments of an enterprising frugality. Thrift is a

virtue, whose services the personal manager can always find it worth while to utilize.

Value of Thrift

"If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out," said James J. Hill. "The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop it. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you."

Thrift is a security against adversity.

"Save a little of thy income," said Benjamin Franklin, "and thy hidebound pocket will soon begin to thrive and thou wilt never cry again with empty stomach, neither will creditors insult thee, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor will nakedness freeze thee. The whole hemisphere will shine brighter and pleasure spring up in every corner of thy heart."

Thrift develops the business character.

"Extravagance rots character; train youth away from it," said Theodore Roosevelt. "On the other hand, the habit of saving money, while it stiffens the will, also brightens the energies. If you would be sure that you are beginning right, begin to save."

Thrift helps to establish credit.

"Before you are taken into partnership and given a chance to spend the funds of the firm," wisely declared Elbert Hubbard, "you must give evidence that you know how to care for your own. The worthless, the shiftless, the insincere, the always needy, never get ahead and at the bank they are unknown."

Thrift enables you to take advantage of opportunities.

This is its main service. It represents in operation the foundations of a financial preparedness.