Dollars and Sense Part 12

Hard times and prosperity rotate several times in a man's business career.

Hard times are necessary to the general scheme, for with continuous prosperity business would increase to such a momentum that there is no telling what the results would be.

In times of prosperity you must make preparations for the hard times that are sure to come. If your pumps are greater than your leaks, your craft won't sink when the storm of adversity and hard times breaks across your s.h.i.+p.

Sleep

No one can do his best work if his mind is wool gathering. If an employe is thinking about the races, he is cheating his boss, for he cannot give him his best service. If the employe is in the habit of being up late nights, he cannot concentrate his mind nor bring out the best there is in him. Nothing is so good for the hard worker, nothing will stand him in such good stead, as plenty of sleep.

Go to bed early. Get lots of sleep every night and you will be ready and strong for the fray of the morrow. If you get plenty of sleep you are far ahead of your fellow employe who does not get enough sleep.

Sleep smooths out the wrinkles, builds up a storage battery in you and gives you confidence in yourself. You hold your head higher, your step is more elastic, your eyes are clearer, your mind works better, and your stomach does its full duty if you have taken plenty of time for sleep, for sleep is the plan of nature to restore the mind and the body.

Lack of sleep means wilful waste of your energies and a dulling of your abilities.

Business men pay for ability, keenness, alertness and capacity, and in proportion as you limit these qualifications by lack of sleep, so in proportion will your salary be kept down.

Grumbling

Grumbling kills friends. The business man who is ever grumbling and growling about things makes a blue atmosphere about him. People somehow or other seem to prefer a rosy atmosphere to a blue.

There is no good in grumbling. It gains nothing. Grumbling is an evidence that you have not sized things up correctly. That you are laboring under a delusion; that you are looking at the world through blue gla.s.ses, that you are not making proper estimates of other people.

Grumbling is an advertis.e.m.e.nt to the world that you are not well balanced. Grumbling won't help things a bit. The more you indulge in the habit the more firmly it becomes fixed upon you, and later you will find it almost impossible to shake it off. The grumbler grows to be a pessimist; he says disagreeable things; he makes his friends feel ill at ease. The grumbler gradually loses his acquaintances and even his close friends.

If you are starting on the grumbling path, pull yourself together and cut the habit quick and short. Grumbling and indigestion go hand in hand. If you have indigestion, square yourself against it, make up your mind you will not indulge yourself and vent your ill feelings in grumbling.

If you can start out each day with a resolve not to grumble you will find the proposition not difficult. The first two or three hours of the day is the time when your resistance is called into play. There is no better antidote or cure for the poisonous grumbling disposition than the following, which has been for many years a pet sermonette of the writer: Be pleasant in the morning until ten o'clock, the rest of the day will take care of itself.

a.s.sociates

"Birds of a feather flock together." "A man is known by the company he keeps." "Like begets like." "We are creatures of environment."

All these truthful sayings have been preserved as proverbs simply because they are simon pure truths.

The matter of a.s.sociates is most important for the business man or employe to consider. The young man who spends his time in gambling, drinking or dissipation cannot do his best work. He can no more hide these practices than the clouds can obscure the sun permanently, for evil, as well as truth, is sure to come out.

One of the best attributes a man can possess is character. Character gives him credit at the bank, it gives him a standing among men. If the employe ever expects to be a boss he must have character, and he must a.s.sociate with men of ideas who will be helpful to him.

A man will never improve his game of billiards if he always a.s.sociates and plays with an inferior. He may satisfy himself for the time being that he is a big toad in a little puddle, but if he plays with a poorer player than he is he is bound to retrograde.

The only way we can advance is to surround ourselves and a.s.sociate with uplifting influences and healthful individuals. Our eyes should be turned forward and not backward.

It will make several seconds difference in the speed of a horse whether he is running against a horse he can beat or running against a horse that can beat him. Race horse men have reduced this truth to actual practice. They have what is called a pace maker. When they want a horse to trot fast they mount a boy on a running horse just ahead of the trotter.

If a man a.s.sociates with his inferiors, the a.s.sociation will surely keep him from progressing.

If you want to make money, if you want to progress in the business world, go where money is being made and mix with people who are making money.

No man is naturally bad. No man gives himself over to criminal acts or hurtful habits solely upon his own instincts. These actions and habits come about through a.s.sociations.

Go to the criminal court any day and you will see evidences of the man who is pulled down on account of his a.s.sociates.

Mix with your superiors in matters of business and morals and you will unconsciously absorb qualities and ideas that will push you to the front.

Hitch your wagon to a star. Aim high. Pick out ideals in business, and eliminate from your path all deterrent influences. There is no hold-back like harmful a.s.sociations. You will be judged by the company you keep.

Old dog Tray was really a good dog, but he suffered because of his propensity to a.s.sociate with bad dogs.

Fixed Charges

Fixed charges are sums you have to pay out regularly, week after week, or year after year. When you buy materials and supplies, when you lease property or hire employes, or pay interest on borrowed money all such things are fixed charges, and it calls for the best there is in a man to keep these fixed charges down as low as possible. When you buy a single item, such as a desk or a chair or a waste basket, do not lose a lot of valuable time trying to save too much on those articles.

When you go to New York once a year, do not stay at a second cla.s.s hotel for the several days you are in New York, when by the expenditure of fifty cents a day more you could stop at a good hotel.

It is false economy to spend five dollars' worth of time to save fifty cents.

When you are buying single articles that are not fixed charges you have a little more leeway in the matter of price than when you are buying things that come under the head of fixed charges.

In the matter of fixed charges the penny you save on the unit a.s.sumes vast proportions in the many multiples.

Some men will deny themselves a respectable desk because they can buy a cheaper one for ten dollars less, and this same person will lose a thousand dollars through laxity in buying things that come under the head of fixed charges.

If you buy one lead pencil never mind whether the price is five or ten cents, but if you buy great gross lots every few weeks you can afford to be very circ.u.mspect and painstaking in the matter of price.

If you are buying a s.h.i.+rt, fifty cents one way or the other does not make much difference, but if you are in the furnis.h.i.+ng goods business and buying thousands of s.h.i.+rts at a time, twenty-five cents a dozen means quite a lot.

The matter of stationery and printing comes under the head of fixed charges. If you are buying letter paper for your personal use and you require but three or four hundred sheets in the course of a year, don't bother very much about the price per quire. The stationery you use in your business, which you buy in large quant.i.ties, you should be careful of. Plain, respectable, good quality letter paper is the kind used by successful concerns. The fancy-colored, freakish paper is nearly always used by the four-flusher in business. He is trying to put on a good front. He uses hand made paper and hand made envelopes. All the get-rich-quick people use fancy, high-priced stationery.

The successful house uses a good quality of linen or bond paper, and a medium grade, regular stock size envelope. Envelopes are thrown away; letters are saved. That is why an envelope does not require to be as good quality as the letter. It is the letter and what you put on the letter that cuts the ice.

Fixed charges usually hide a lot of little leaks. Stop them. Many little leaks make a big aggregate in the course of a year, and there is no place where these leaks start as easily as in the matter of fixed charges.