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THE TEN LAWS 
 
 OF 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN R. MEADER (' 
 
 “GRAHAM HOOD” 
 
 Author of “The Force That Wins,” Etc. 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
 Publisned by 
 
 The Business Man’s Publishing Company, Ltd. 
 Detroit, Mich. 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS, 
 
Entered According to Act of Congress, 
 in the year 1911, by 
 
 THE BUSINESS MAN’S PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. 
 
 DETROIT, MICH. 
 
 la the office of the Librarian of 
 Congress 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Eaw of Integrity. 1 
 
 II. The Eaw of Initiative. 17 
 
 III. The Eaw of Concentration. 33 
 
 IV. The Eaw of Attention. 49 
 
 V. The Eaw of Faith. 63 
 
 VI. The Eaw of Seef-Reeiance. 79 
 
 VII.. The Eaw of Courage. 95 
 
 VIII. The Eaw of Economy. 113 
 
 IX. The Eaw of Temperance. 129 
 
 X. The Eaw of Compensation. 145 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Law of Integrity. 
 
 One of the present-day deficiencies of the com¬ 
 mercial world is its failure to provide proper defi¬ 
 nitions for the two terms “ success ” and “ fail¬ 
 ure.” There was once a time when the question 
 of relative success was not determined entirely by 
 the number of millions of dollars amassed by the 
 several individuals. In those days, it is true, 
 money did not count for as much as it does now, 
 for there was less of it, and the competition for its 
 possession was not so great. On the other hand, 
 it was principle that counted, and the honorable 
 business man of that era thought as much of living 
 up to his ideals, and preserving the integrity of his 
 character, as he did of making a fortune. Study, 
 as one example, the old Quaker merchants who 
 then held so prominent a position in the business 
 world. They made money—plenty of it—but 
 
2 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 they made it so honorably that they won the es¬ 
 teem of other men just as they maintained their 
 own self-respect. 
 
 Some men of affairs endeavor to prove that the 
 commercial standards of the world have changed 
 during the past half-century. Whether that state¬ 
 ment be true or false, the fact remains that the 
 basic principles of morality have not changed. 
 What was dishonest one hundred years ago is dis¬ 
 honest to-day, and true success is still quite as 
 far from being a matter of dollars and cents. 
 
 If illustrative instances are needed, there are 
 many of them. For example, it was not many 
 years ago that a number of then-great American 
 masters of finance were writing articles for the 
 magazines, purporting to tell the young men of the 
 nation how they, too, might win the laurel wreath 
 of financial success. At that time there was a sort 
 of halo above the heads of these master-builders 
 of the business world. Theirs were such great 
 names that the people stood in awe of them. 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 3 
 
 Mention some of those who were then the most 
 prolific writers, however, and note how many per¬ 
 sons greet the names with terms of reverence or 
 respect. They may still have their wealth—the 
 money which was once regarded as the outward 
 and visible sign of their triumph—but the public 
 has changed its opinions regarding them. It has 
 commenced to realize that “success” based upon 
 dishonest practices, or upon one man’s ability to 
 take an unfair advantage of his neighbor, is but 
 another word for “ failure.” 
 
 If there is one asset that counts for more than 
 anything else in the struggle for business success, it 
 is unimpaired self-respect. The ability to look 
 every man straight in the eye—to feel that nowhere 
 in the world is there anyone who can justly charge 
 you with dishonesty—are tests of character that 
 represent a capital from which the business man 
 may draw sufficient strength to enable him to rise 
 superior to all adverse conditions. Reverses may 
 come—as reverses are almost certain to come to 
 
4 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 any man at one time or another—but, if he can 
 meet them squarely and without fear, it is only a 
 matter of time before he will find the way to 
 triumph over them. 
 
 The young man who is just beginning his busi¬ 
 ness career can make no greater mistake than to 
 get the impression that there is ever a time when 
 dishonesty pays. It is true that the adage, “ Hon¬ 
 esty is the best policy,” bears the hall-marks of 
 antiquity, but the words are just as true today as 
 they were when they were originally uttered. 
 
 Disregarding the ethical aspect of the question, 
 one great disadvantage of a dishonest action is that 
 it is so liable to be found out. Thus, when a busi¬ 
 ness man permits himself to do anything that is 
 “shady,” somebody is pretty certain to discover the 
 deception, after which it is merely a matter of time 
 when the fatal truth—exaggerated out of all pro¬ 
 portions, perhaps—will have gone its rounds. It 
 makes practically no difference what sort of decep¬ 
 tion it is of which a business man has been guilty— 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 5 
 
 his reputation is gone as soon as the fact becomes 
 generally known, and with it vanishes that confi¬ 
 dence of the people that makes business possible. 
 
 It is surprising how few persons there are who 
 realize how much success depends upon their own 
 actions and thoughts. In fact, many seem to pos¬ 
 sess a sort of instinctive feeling that each human 
 being is a shuttlecock of Fate, a creature who is 
 tossed about as the impact of the battledore may 
 chance to direct. 
 
 Such persons talk about their “ luck ”—their 
 “ good luck,” or their “ bad luck ”—as though 
 “ luck ” were something with which mankind had 
 nothing to do—as though the goddess who reigned 
 over man’s destiny was blind, and he, poor soul, 
 was nothing more than the innocent victim of her 
 whims and fancies. 
 
 If this were true—or if we could logically be¬ 
 lieve it to be true—there might be some reason why 
 we should rail at our misfortunes, but when, on 
 the contrary, the so-called misfortunes of life, like 
 
6 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 life’s good fortunes, are largely of our own mak¬ 
 ing, our complaints about the “ bad luck ” to 
 which we have been subjected have the ring of ab¬ 
 surdity. 
 
 Years ago it might truly have been said that 
 persons who believed themselves tormented by 
 “runs of bad luck” deserved the sympathy of their 
 fellows; but that was before scientists had inves¬ 
 tigated the human mind, before the psychologist 
 had discovered what wonderful creative forces we 
 possess in our mental faculties. Now, however, 
 anybody who purchases one of the recent works 
 on psychology in its relation to the every-day life 
 of man will find little trouble in mastering enough 
 of the scientific truth to learn that health, happiness 
 and success are more thoroughly matters of the 
 Will than they are matters of destiny, for the part 
 that Fate, or chance, may play in our lives is an 
 unimportant one when compared to the influence 
 that the mind exerts, even over material things. 
 
 This is not Christian Science, or New Thought, 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 7 
 
 or the teachings of any modern cult. It represents 
 the common-sense discoveries of logical thinkers 
 who are at last bridging the chasm between prac¬ 
 tical truth and impractical superstition. It teaches 
 us that a man’s ability to recognize and seize upon 
 opportunity depends largely upon the character of 
 his mental attitude toward the objects of his de¬ 
 sires—that if he is prepared to take advantage of 
 the chances that come to him, he will soon find all 
 the opportunities he requires to free himself from 
 the terrors of such imaginary enemies as “ luck.” 
 Moreover, it also teaches that, once the opportun¬ 
 ity has been tightly grasped, the ability to make 
 the most of it is purely a matter of personality, and, 
 lastly, that personality is itself actually nothing 
 more or less than a creature of the Will. In brief, 
 man is, to a great degree, self-creative, and within 
 himself he has the powers, or forces, by means of 
 which life may be made or marred. 
 
 Before any of these laws of mental control can 
 be put into successful operation, however, there 
 
8 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 
 
 must be a firm foundation of character upon which 
 the structure of success may be built, and the very 
 corner-stone of this foundation must be the quali¬ 
 ties that we denote as “ honesty.” 
 
 To comprehend what the term “ honesty ” 
 really means, it is not necessary to go further than 
 the Bible, for there we find a law of business pro¬ 
 cedure that has never been surpassed by the 
 teaching of any code or ethical cult. This law 
 specifies that, while it is entirely right that each 
 person shall love himself and shall exercise due 
 care in guarding his own interests, he shall also 
 love his neighbor, and make just as fair a standard 
 in caring for his interests. 
 
 It is all very clear—and very logical, too. 
 Success—the right kind of success—is based upon 
 square dealings, and to deal squarely is to carry 
 out the principles laid down in the Golden Rule, 
 for the man who does to others as he would have 
 them do to him necessarily shapes his life upon the 
 “ square ” model. At the same time, it must be 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 9 
 
 remembered that the term “ honesty ” has a far 
 wider significance than, at first thought, one might 
 ordinarily imagine. Thus, many employes utterly 
 fail to realize that it is dishonest to take their em¬ 
 ployer’s money in the form of wages, or salary, 
 when they have failed to give an adequate return 
 in services rendered. Because they have been 
 placed upon the pay roll and have spent the speci¬ 
 fied number of hours each day at the post to which 
 they were assigned, they feel free to draw their 
 pay at the end of the week, entirely without regard 
 to the character of the work that they may have 
 performed. Yet, honesty plays its part in this 
 relation fully as much as it would if the employer 
 proved false to his end of the bargain, and, after 
 agreeing to pay a certain amount for service rend¬ 
 ered, refused, or otherwise failed to do so. 
 
 The giving of short weight is undoubtedly one 
 of the meanest kinds of thievery that prevails in 
 business life, yet there are many ways in which 
 short weight may be given without resorting to the 
 
10 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 use of the ordinary weights and measures of com¬ 
 merce. The person who shirks the work that he 
 is expected to perform, is guilty of giving short 
 weight to the man who employs him. If he does 
 this work only half as well as he is able to do it, 
 he cheats his employer out of just one-half of the 
 money that he receives in payment for these ser¬ 
 vices. 
 
 A great many employes are also of the opinion 
 that they are the absolute masters of their spare 
 time, and can spend it wisely or foolishly as fancy 
 may dictate. Although quite willing to admit that 
 their employer has the right to say what shall be 
 done during business hours, they deny to him any 
 authority to exercise similar restrictions over them 
 when the working day is ended. 
 
 The truth is that, in addition to hiring our bodies 
 —our hands and feet and mouth and eyes and ears 
 —the man for whom we work also employs that 
 reservoir of force which we term the mind. He 
 expects us to work for him faithfully with all our 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 II 
 
 physical powers, but he also expects us to keep our 
 mental powers in such condition that they, too, 
 may be able to do service in his behalf. We are 
 employed, not with the idea that we are to give a 
 certain number of hours in time each day in return 
 for the money we are paid, but we are also sup¬ 
 posed to accept the moral obligation to see that the 
 work performed is good work. By working prop¬ 
 erly during the hours set apart for that purpose, 
 and spending the balance of the time in rest, recre¬ 
 ation and sleep, we maintain a condition of the 
 body that enables us to keep our part of this con¬ 
 tract, whereas nights spent in dissipation unfit us 
 for the work of the succeeding day—by failing to 
 repair the bodily waste. As the work that would 
 naturally be performed under such conditions must 
 mean a distinct loss to the employer in value re¬ 
 ceived, the law of honesty requires that we keep 
 a close guard upon our forces, even during our idle 
 moments. 
 
 To maintain one’s foothold in the business 
 
12 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 world it is necessary to accomplish" something that 
 is worth while from a monetary point of view, and 
 it is at this point that many young men begin to 
 turn life into a failure. Sometimes through lack 
 of ability, but more frequently through want of 
 persistence, or absence of forethought, or, perhaps, 
 through sheer indolence, they display their inabil¬ 
 ity to perform the tasks with which they have been 
 intrusted. 
 
 Under such conditions it becomes very easy to 
 resort to another eminently dishonest custom—the 
 making of excuses. Unfortunately, the origin of 
 this practice too often dates back to childhood, for 
 ? it is no uncommon thing for children to gain the 
 impression that excuses will excuse them for any 
 fault or failure of which they may have been 
 guilty. Let them step out of the school sphere into 
 the active business life, however, and they soon 
 discover that there is no room for the man who is 
 not able to produce results. Any attempt they 
 may make to evade this responsibility by taking 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 13 
 
 refuge in the invention of excuses is nothing more 
 nor less than real dishonesty, for excuses are more 
 than likely to be based upon falsehood and a lie' 
 is always dishonorable, especially if it is designed 
 merely to protect us from the consequences of our 
 own misdeeds. 
 
 A man who has lived his life so successfully that 
 he now occupies a position of great responsibility, 
 once said to me: 
 
 “ I have seen many men rise and fall in the 
 world, but I never have seen anybody seriously 
 injure his prospects by telling the truth. When I 
 was a very young man I made up my mind that 
 there was nothing in this world that was worth a 
 lie, and I can safely say that much of my success 
 is due to this fact. I have had several employers 
 in my life, but I never worked for a man without 
 winning his confidence. I always told him the 
 truth, and he soon saw that I was to be trusted. It 
 is one of the laws of success.” 
 
 While it is unquestionably true that a deserved 
 
14 
 
 'The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 reputation for veracity is one of the most valuable 
 assets that any man can possess, there is probably 
 no single factor among the many that contribute to 
 success that is more difficult of attainment. The 
 man who tells the truth, the whole truth, and noth¬ 
 ing but the truth at all times is certain to get into 
 serious trouble, for truth is one of the most danger¬ 
 ous weapons that man can handle. “ How then,” 
 you ask, “ is it possible for a man to tell the truth 
 consistently and still maintain his position in the 
 business and social circles of which he is a part? ” 
 
 To speak plainly, the matter is largely one of 
 individual discrimination. To succeed in life it is 
 imperative that one should be known as a truth- 
 teller, for success is so much a matter of mutual 
 confidence that it extends far beyond the plane of 
 employer and employe. It is the basis of all suc¬ 
 cessful business operations. It is the foundation 
 of all matters of finance. Take confidence from 
 the business world and little would be left. 
 
 To be a truth-teller, however, it is not necessary 
 
The Law of Integrity 
 
 15 
 
 that a man should be a fool—that he should go 
 about seeking opportunities to exploit disagreeable 
 truths, merely because he knows them to be true. 
 No, it simply means that he must be one who re¬ 
 fuses to tell a lie, either to advance his own in¬ 
 terests or to promote improperly the interests of 
 other people. He must be a person who can al¬ 
 ways be depended upon to give a truthful answer, 
 and if he shows that he will not lie, even to save 
 himself from the consequences of his own follies, 
 that he may curry favor, or that he may improve 
 his own position or that of others, all men soon 
 learn to trust him. That is what is meant by the 
 expression, “ telling the truth,” and the person who 
 recognizes this distinction between truth and false¬ 
 hood, and who lives up to this ideal, is obeying 
 the first law of success. 
 

 
 
 i 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Law of Initiative. 
 
 ORDER is the foundation of success. Before 
 we can accomplish anything that is really worth 
 while we must see clearly what it is that we want 
 to do. Even the desire that we call “ ambition ” 
 and the energy that we call “ initiative,** powerful 
 as they may be, are wasted if our endeavor is with¬ 
 out a well-defined goal. 
 
 If you were in need of a suit of clothes, the first 
 thing the tailor would do would be to measure you 
 that he might make a pattern by which to cut your 
 coat, vest and trousers. If you were an inventor 
 and thought that you had discovered something 
 for which the world had long been waiting, one of 
 your first acts would be to design a model. You 
 might do it with pencil and paper, or you might 
 make a real working model, but you would be 
 
 17 
 
18 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 very careful to see that the model worked reason¬ 
 ably well before you went to the expense of con¬ 
 structing the actual machine. 
 
 The same is true about every task that we 
 undertake in life, yet, upon the most important 
 point of all—life itself—we go haphazard, with¬ 
 out regard to such a factor as model, pattern or 
 plan. In fact, we are brought up as if this were 
 the proper way to get the most out of life, for 
 when we have spent a few years at school, where 
 we derive a more or less satisfactory general edu¬ 
 cation, we plunge headlong into the field of action, 
 with practically no working plan to guide us. 
 
 When we remember that no great achievement 
 —from building a house to painting a picture or 
 reconstructing a government—was ever completed 
 until after it had existed as a finished product in 
 the mind of its creator, the folly of such a course 
 becomes obvious. We know that the mental pic¬ 
 ture, at least, must precede the drawing in outline, 
 or even the simplest plans and specifications. Ac- 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 19 
 
 cordingly, it is easy to see that the more perfectly 
 the mental picture is formed, the more accurately 
 it can be followed—the more perfectly repro¬ 
 duced. 
 
 It is for this reason that those who are anxious 
 to succeed should practise the art of visualizing— 
 the art of painting mental pictures—or making 
 mental plans—so accurately and graphically that 
 it seems as if they might almost exist through the 
 sheer force of their own expression. It is best, 
 when possible, that these dream-like creations of 
 ours should take the form of pictures, that we may 
 see in them the finished product and understand 
 about how they ought to look. Thus, with such a 
 picture in mind, it is quite possible for us to know 
 what we ought to do. Before the mental picture 
 is formed, we have only the bare outline of an 
 idea at best—the first rough sketch. It lacks de¬ 
 tail. To make it effective, this detail, or a great 
 deal of it, must be supplied. The roughest sketch 
 on a scrap of paper may be the germ of a great 
 
20 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 masterpiece, but there is little to indicate the fact, 
 and it does not begin to be convincing until we 
 make the lines more regular and work in the details 
 that give the sense of perspective. And the same 
 rule must be applied to our mental pictures. It is 
 only when we know how to make them clear and 
 distinct that they begin to furnish us with sufficient 
 inspiration to enable us to reproduce them in real¬ 
 ity. 
 
 From this it may be seen that the practice of 
 making plans in the shape of mental pictures is one 
 of the best habits which we can form. To picture 
 yourself in the position that you most desire to oc¬ 
 cupy, to see yourself in the kind of house in which 
 you most wish to live, wearing the apparel that 
 you would most like to wear, and associating with 
 the persons with whom you would most like to 
 associate, is one of the best ways of planting the 
 seed from which the desired harvest may be real¬ 
 ized. The clearer—the more distinct—you can 
 make these pictures appear to you, the more in- 
 
— 
 
 The Law of Initiative 
 
 21 
 
 spiration you will derive from them, the more 
 chance there will be of realizing the ambitions 
 which they portray. 
 
 This is a suggestion that anybody may follow 
 with profit. Don’t mind if people call you a 
 dreamer. Remember that Fulton, Newton, Edi¬ 
 son and all the other great inventors, scientists, ar¬ 
 tists and writers have been dubbed “ dreamers,” 
 too. In one sense, the charge was justified. They 
 were not the sort of dreamers who wilfully waste 
 their time dozing the days away, but the kind who 
 find in their dreams, their air castles, or their men¬ 
 tal pictures, the inspiration that enables them to 
 become useful producers of things that the world 
 needs. 
 
 When the plan has once been developed, how¬ 
 ever, the next thing is to put it into execution and 
 it is here that the idle-dreamer fails. To construct 
 a house, the preliminary step is to secure an archi¬ 
 tect’s plans, yet the plans alone are of little value 
 unless you have a builder to see that they are 
 
22 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 carried out. It is the latter who must attend to the 
 details and make the structure a habitable one. 
 
 In constructing a career—in building the struc¬ 
 ture that we term “ success ”—the same law ap¬ 
 plies. In fact, the “ planning ” is the easiest part, 
 and will mean but little if we do not succeed in 
 visualizing so clearly, or painting our mental pic¬ 
 tures so enticingly, that we become imbued with a 
 strong desire to make them a reality. 
 
 It is no weak, half-hearted determination that 
 will produce this result. The desire that rouses 
 the will to the action that we denote as “ initia¬ 
 tive ” must be so ardent, so keen, so determined as 
 to be practically irresistible. In other words, it is 
 only by wanting a thing so hard that we cannot do 
 without it that we can spur ourselves to the point 
 of realizing our ambitions. It is when desire has 
 bred this determination in the heart, that the ordin¬ 
 ary obtacles of life become but trivialities, and we 
 plough our way to success, regardless of such fac¬ 
 tors as opposing circumstances and adverse envir¬ 
 onment. 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 23 
 
 Many people seem to feel that they are comply¬ 
 ing with all necessary obligations if they do what 
 they are told, or “ try ” to do the things that they 
 are told to do. With such ideas in mind, however, 
 the attainment of even relative success becomes 
 next to impossible. Ask any man who has made a 
 success to what principle he owes his advance¬ 
 ment, and, in nine cases out of ten, he will tell you 
 that his rise from the ranks of the wage-earner was 
 due to the fact that he not only mastered all the 
 details of his business, but that he also showed his 
 employer that he could be depended upon to take 
 the initiative. He did not spend his idle moments 
 trying to evolve a scheme to waste his employer’s 
 time without getting detected. He took an interest 
 in the affairs of the man who hired him. He did 
 not have to be told what to do. He knew what 
 had to be done and he went about the work of 
 doing it so intelligently that the recognition of his 
 ability came as a natural result. 
 
 Then, too, the man who “ tries ” stands a pretty 
 
24 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 small chance of success, for he seldom succeeds in 
 accomplishing the results that he is “ trying ” to 
 attain. The very fact that he is merely willing to 
 “ try,” presupposes, from the beginning, the pos¬ 
 sibility of failure. To say that we will “ try ” 
 means that we may fail, and there is no surer 
 method of attracting failure than to anticipate it. 
 
 It is the man who says, “ I will,” and who 
 means it, who succeeds in accomplishing the great 
 deeds of the world. The simple expression, “ I 
 will! ” carries with it the force of a strong mental 
 determination, backed by an ardent desire to carry 
 it out. Thus, the man who “ tries ” finds the path 
 to accomplishment filled with many varieties of 
 apparently insurmountable obstacles—obstacles 
 that are “ insurmountable ” simply because he 
 lacks the faith and the enthusiasm that would en¬ 
 able him to surmount them—the faith and en¬ 
 thusiasm that sincere desire alone can breed. 
 
 Quite a number of years ago three young men 
 went to Chicago. They were practically penni- 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 25 
 
 less young men, but they had the most valuable 
 asset that any man can possess: a combination of 
 good health, upright principles, courage and ini¬ 
 tiative. As may be imagined, these young men 
 found little difficulty in securing positions, and 
 while, in the beginning, they were not particularly 
 well paid, the work gave them an opportunity to 
 show the sort of material of which they were made. 
 
 So several years went by, with each of the 
 young men performing his particular duties in the 
 same dry goods store, but one day, when they were 
 at luncheon together, they came to the determina¬ 
 tion that they would form a partnership and go 
 into business for themselves. So far as money was 
 concerned, they had little to show for their years 
 of hard work, but they had something that was 
 far better than money, for, to their original asset, 
 they had added the factor of experience. 
 
 From that day and for many years afterwards, 
 as we learn by reading the stories of their lives, 
 their sole thought was fixed upon the business to 
 
26 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 which they had agreed to devote themselves. 
 Later, when each had made a vast fortune, they 
 thought about other matters—became interested 
 in other avenues of investment—but, so long as the 
 business required their sole attention it received it. 
 
 It was a hard struggle at first, for money was no 
 easier to get then than it is in these days. Again 
 and again they ran up against obstacles that would 
 have discouraged less courageous men, but they 
 were born fighters—all men are fighters who are 
 inspired by an ardent desire to win—and they 
 fought the battles of the business world with per¬ 
 fect confidence that nothing could defeat them. 
 
 The names of the three young men were Mar¬ 
 shall Field, Potter Palmer and Levi Z. Leiter, 
 and the story of their victory is the history of the 
 organization and development of one of the great¬ 
 est business enterprises in the United States. 
 Starting with practically no other capital than the 
 belief that the purchasing public would be glad to 
 buy goods from a firm that treated everybody hon- 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 27 
 
 estly, they “ won out,” but they would never have 
 succeeded if it had not been for the fact that they 
 had a well-defined plan of action and that each 
 was inspired with the overmastering desire to see 
 this plan realized. With such an inspiration, it 
 was not hard for them to make this project the sole 
 interest of their lives—the one interest to which 
 they could devote themselves with an enthusiasm 
 that made failure next to impossible. 
 
 What these young men accomplished, countless 
 others have done and are doing. The history of 
 almost any one of the great commercial enterprises 
 proves that it is the personal element and not the 
 mere question of money that counts for success. 
 Money is sometimes a good thing to have, but, 
 without desire-inspired initiative, it will not go far 
 enough to accomplish a great victory. Many men 
 of practically unlimited capital have gone out of 
 business simply because they were tired of losing 
 money. Many men without money have scored a 
 victory through the force that is generated by the 
 determination, or the keen desire, to succeed. 
 
28 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 Fortunately, each of the qualities that I have de¬ 
 scribed may be cultivated and developed by those 
 who wish to possess them. Others have done it, 
 and what others have done you can do. In the 
 first place, the law of concentration must be mas¬ 
 tered, the art of devoting every energy to one ob¬ 
 ject; exercise your will power, not only by con¬ 
 centration, but by doing things that you do not 
 want to do and, not least of all, practice visualiz¬ 
 ing—keeping constantly before your mind’s eye 
 so clear a picture of the thing you wish to do or 
 what you desire to become, that the determination 
 to accomplish this result will unconsciously take 
 possession of you with constantly renewed strength. 
 
 Many centuries ago an old maxim-maker 
 evolved a phrase that sounded so well to him that 
 he presented it to the world for its guidance. 
 “ Opportunity knocks once at every man’s door,” 
 he said, and since that day mankind has jumped 
 to the conclusion that this sentence represents the 
 height of human wisdom. Shakespeare, writing 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 29 
 
 his plays some hundreds of years later, accepted 
 this assertion as a foregone conclusion. Byron, 
 long after Shakespeare’s time, repeated the idea, 
 and it is doubtful if there are many bits of modern 
 verse that have been read and praised more widely 
 than the sonnet in which Senator Ingalls revamped 
 this time-worn proverb. 
 
 It is not strange that, with all this repetition, 
 many persons should have felt that they must ac¬ 
 cept this theory as true. The poets have sung of 
 the “ chance that came but once ”—of the oppor¬ 
 tunity that tapped so lightly at each man’s door—a 
 single tap in a lifetime of waiting—and then stole 
 softly away nevermore to return. If they fail, 
 therefore, they console themselves with the thought 
 that they were among the unfortunate individuals 
 who chanced to be asleep at the moment when 
 the tap of opportunity sounded on their doorpost; 
 but, as they can not see in what manner they were 
 to blame, they settle down quietly to take things 
 as they come, satisfied that the life they live is the 
 inevitable one for them. 
 
30 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to find 
 any statement, either in prose or verse, that is more 
 foreign to the truth. Opportunity does knock at 
 every man’s door, but it does not steal up to the 
 door like a thief in the night, or, like a mischievous 
 boy, rap but once and then run away. Instead, 
 opportunity’s call may be heard at almost any 
 time, if our ears are attuned to hear it, and, as one 
 modern philosopher has said somewhat colloqui¬ 
 ally, “it is even possible to recall cases in which 
 opportunity actually smashed in the door and col¬ 
 lared her candidate and dragged him forth to sue- 
 cess. 
 
 Do you remember poor old Mr. Micawber, and 
 the patience with which he waited for something 
 to turn up? There are no end of Micawbers 
 walking the city streets today, or holding down 
 poorly-paid jobs that they may have food and a 
 roof to shelter them while they are waiting for op¬ 
 portunity—for the opportunity that, as a rule, 
 never comes. Mr. Micawber did not make much 
 
The Law of Initiative 
 
 31 
 
 of a success out of life, and those who wait for 
 things to come to them are destined to be just about 
 as successful as he was. The man who “waits” for 
 opportunity to seek him out is doomed to disap¬ 
 pointment. The strong man goes in search of op¬ 
 portunity and, if necessary, makes it for himself by 
 sheer strength of determination—the overmaster¬ 
 ing desire to “ make good.” 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Law of Concentration. 
 
 What would be thought of a pilot who, after 
 taking control of a vessel and having been given 
 its course, began to turn the wheel from one side 
 to the other, sending the ship from east to west, 
 and then back again, just as if there were no such 
 things as compasses and rules of navigation to 
 guide him? 
 
 Such a pilot would undoubtedly soon find him¬ 
 self without a commission, and nobody could 
 blame the master of the vessel for removing him 
 from a post at which he had disgraced himself so 
 signally. Yet this is precisely what many individ¬ 
 uals are doing with their lives, steering themselves 
 into mishaps and failures from sheer lack of con¬ 
 centration. 
 
 When used in this connection, the term “ con¬ 
 centration ” means the power to fix the attention 
 
 S3 
 
34 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 so firmly upon the object in which we are inter¬ 
 ested that no extraneous influence can turn us from 
 it or cause us to become absorbed in other things. 
 It is not a difficult statement to comprehend, yet 
 the fact which it embodies is one of the most vital 
 truths that men can learn, for it is through the 
 power of concentration only that we can accom¬ 
 plish the results which we aim to attain, and the 
 greater our capacity in this direction the more re¬ 
 markable our achievements will be. 
 
 In almost every instance, those who rank as 
 human failures are individuals who have never 
 mastered the art of concentration. Instead of 
 keeping their mind fixed upon a single purpose to 
 the exclusion of all others, they think about a 
 dozen things while they are trying to do one and 
 so dissipate their energies most hopelessly. In a 
 word, “ concentration ” is the co-operation be¬ 
 tween mind and muscle, and until this has been 
 brought about, even a moderate success proves im¬ 
 possible of attainment. 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 35 
 
 We speak of “ physical labor ” and “ brain 
 work ” as though they were two entirety different 
 things, when in reality nothing that we do is so 
 unimportant that the two should not co-operate in 
 its performance. Even the simplest act that we 
 perform makes its draft upon the brain, and suc¬ 
 cess in doing things depends largely upon the de¬ 
 gree of attention given to it. 
 
 Prentice Mulford relates an experience of his 
 boyhood days in California, when he was gold 
 digging. By his side worked an old miner—a man 
 who had had long and valuable experience in the 
 handling of pick and shovel—and the impatient 
 spasmodic efforts of the youth caused him consid¬ 
 erable amusement. At last, at a moment when 
 both chanced to stop work at the same time, the 
 veteran delivered himself of a few words of good 
 advice to the amateur digger. 
 
 “ My boy,” he said, “ you make too much 
 work of shoveling. Why don’t you put more 
 mind in your shovel? ” 
 
36 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 It was a wise suggestion and it would still be a 
 wise suggestion whatever the field of human en¬ 
 deavor to which the words might be applied. To 
 perform any duty well, we must pay attention to 
 what we are doing. The gymnast at the circus 
 could not climb the rope to the top of the big tent, 
 hand over hand, as he does, if he did not keep his 
 mind firmly fixed upon the details of the feat that 
 he is expected to perform. To all appearances he 
 climbs with his hands, but it is really his mind that 
 supplies him with the power to ascend. His 
 muscles help but without the co-operation of the 
 mind, they would be powerless. It is by the co¬ 
 operation of mind and muscle—by concentration 
 —that the deed is performed. 
 
 In young Mulford’s case the advice was also 
 found to be correct. As he said in one of his 
 essays: “ I found that the more thought I put in 
 the shovel the better I could shovel; the less like 
 work it became; the more like play it became; and 
 the longer my strength for shoveling lasted. I 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 37 
 
 found when my thoughts drifted to other things 
 (no matter what) that soon the less strength and 
 enjoyment had I for shoveling, and the more it be¬ 
 came an irksome task.” 
 
 Some persons may smile at the idea that so 
 simple a task as shoveling requires so much help 
 from the mind, but let us see if it is not so. It re¬ 
 quires a deliberate mental effort to direct the course 
 of even so humble an instrument of industry as a 
 shovel. It is by a mental effort that the point of 
 the shovel is sent to the particular spot where the 
 implement may scoop up the greatest quantity of 
 dirt with the expenditure of the smallest possible 
 amount of physical strength, and, finally, the dis¬ 
 position of the earth most effectively would call 
 for still another co-operation of mind and muscle. 
 
 And, if this is true, how much more necessity 
 there is for this harmonious agreement between the 
 mental and physical forces when there are more 
 consequential duties to be performed. Although 
 we may not have realized the fact, every act that 
 
38 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 we do requires a definite outlay of mental as well 
 as physical strength. Every thought we think 
 means the expenditure of a certain amount of 
 energy—a fact which makes it easy to understand 
 that a great amount of such energy must every day 
 be wasted by those who do not comprehend, or at 
 least, do not obey, this law of nature. Instead of 
 making muscle and mind work together, the mind 
 is permitted to work in one direction while the 
 body is working in an entirely different direction, 
 and twice as much energy is expended as would 
 ordinarily be required. 
 
 If a more definite object lesson is desired, here 
 is an experiment that any person may try for 
 himself: 
 
 Go to a gymnasium where there is a lifting ma¬ 
 chine and see how great a weight you can lift. 
 Turn your attention to the work. Think of abso¬ 
 lutely nothing but your determination to exert 
 every ounce of strength that you possess. Make a 
 record of the weight you have lifted under these 
 
 t 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 39 
 
 conditions; then, try the experiment again. This 
 time, however, let your thoughts wander to every 
 corner of the universe to which they may be 
 tempted to stray. If you can persuade someone to 
 talk with you all the time when you are lifting, so 
 much the better. The attention is easily dis¬ 
 tracted when there is no definite effort toward con¬ 
 centration. Lift the machine when in this frame of 
 mind; then compare the two results. The dif¬ 
 ference between them is the lifting power of con¬ 
 centration. You wouldn’t have believed it, would 
 you? Such results show why it is necessary that 
 we should think about the things we are doing— 
 they make us comprehend why it is impossible for 
 anybody to do really good work automatically. 
 
 Having learned so much about the value of 
 concentrated effort, the next step is to carry this 
 knowledge into all the practical affairs of life, for 
 the truth that the lifting machine depicts so 
 graphically applies just as directly to every other 
 act that we may be called upon to perform. It 
 
40 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 requires a certain amount of force to button a 
 glove, to lace a shoe, to unlock a door. If, when 
 performing such commonplace duties, you keep 
 your mind fixed upon these acts to the exclusion 
 of all other things, you probably spend just about 
 the amount of energy that is necessary to carry 
 them to completion. If, on the contrary, you per¬ 
 mit yourself to think about twenty or thirty dif¬ 
 ferent things while performing one of these simple 
 acts, the chances are that you have exerted a great 
 deal too much energy, and the energy that was 
 not required has been lost. 
 
 To test the strength of your power of concen¬ 
 tration, set your mind upon some specific object 
 and see how long you can keep it there—how 
 long you can prevent it from wandering to other 
 things. Take a lead pencil, and see if you can 
 whittle it to a neat, sharp point without your 
 mind’s once turning to any foreign subject. You 
 may deem this too easy a test to try, but, unless 
 you have given considerable thought to the princi- 
 
 / 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 41 
 
 pies of concentration, it is doubtful if you can do 
 it. Before the task has been half completed you 
 will be surprised at the number of things that have 
 popped into your mind, and, if this is true, it is 
 time that you should begin to practice some simple, 
 mind-strengthening exercises. 
 
 When you arise in the morning, commence the 
 concentration exercises while dressing. See if you 
 can lace one shoe without thinking of any other 
 subject besides the lacing that you are trying to 
 arrange. Continue this practice while performing 
 every little action that is necessary to the com¬ 
 pletion of your attire. If you drop your collar 
 button, keep your mind fixed upon the task of 
 finding it and picking it up until it has actually 
 been recovered. 
 
 From these simple exercises progress is a matter 
 of natural development. A good exercise is to 
 try to read or write in the same room in which 
 other persons are engaged in conversation, and 
 when you have become so successful in focusing 
 
42 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 the will that you are able to accomplish this feat, 
 it will not be long before you will find that you 
 can interpose so strong a resistance to distracting 
 thoughts and things that your mind will obey your 
 slightest command. Then, and not until then, can 
 you use the processes of the mind to produce the 
 greatest possible effect. 
 
 Of course, as may be seen, concentration is 
 largely a matter of habit, and, like any other 
 habit, its development depends upon individual ef¬ 
 fort and practice, for while the simplest exercises 
 may be taken in the quiet of your own room, it 
 is only by actual experience in the noisy, discon¬ 
 certing world that you can put your principles to 
 the test and prove your mastery of yourself. In 
 fact, as Atkinson once said, “ you will find that 
 it often takes even more will to turn away from 
 these outside objects than to follow your main 
 object, but you must master these temptations, 
 even if in doing so you find it necessary to act like 
 Ulysses, who made his companions stop up their 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 43 
 
 ears with wax lest they be fascinated by the song 
 of the Sirens.” 
 
 Some day when you chance to be in the 
 country, devote an hour to watching the inhabit¬ 
 ants of one of the big, busy ant-hill cities that you 
 can find without much difficulty. One of the first 
 things you will notice is that there is no wasted 
 energy in the ants’ methods of working. Before 
 they start to perform any duty they make it a point 
 to find out just what they are expected to do and 
 how they should do it. They don’t go at the 
 task blindly, trusting to luck to get it done ac¬ 
 ceptably. They don’t plunge into their work 
 ignorantly, discovering and correcting their mis¬ 
 takes as best they may. 
 
 If you want to see a living example of concen¬ 
 tration of effort and energy, study the ant. Noth¬ 
 ing distracts his attention from the task upon 
 which he is engaged. If you thrust an obstacle 
 in his path, you may check his progress for the 
 moment, but you can’t make him forget the one 
 
44 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 object upon which his attention has been centered, 
 for the instant he has overcome the obstruction 
 you have prepared for him, he will return to his 
 work with renewed vigor, as if he felt the neces¬ 
 sity of making up for lost time. 
 
 Once the ants have found out what they are to 
 do, there is no idling over the task. They don’t 
 loaf their employer’s time away, keeping one eye 
 on their work and the other open for the appear¬ 
 ance of the boss. On the contrary, when they 
 begin to work, they keep steadily at it until noth¬ 
 ing more remains to be done. Don’t imagine for 
 a moment that the ants are so foolish as to work all 
 the time. They find ample opportunity to eat 
 all that is good for them and they go to bed early 
 enough to get plenty of sleep. They even have 
 their favorite forms of recreation, and when they 
 play, or go off on pleasure excursions, they make 
 it their business to have all the fun they can; but 
 —when they work—they work, and do not stop to 
 wonder how they are going to succeed. 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 45 
 
 The greatest aid to the attainment of any pur¬ 
 pose is confidence in our ability to perform the 
 act that we have set out to accomplish. Before 
 we can make other people believe in us we must 
 believe in ourselves. Moreover, belief is one’s 
 self means something more than self-conceit. 
 Some persons are sufficiently conceited to dare to 
 undertake anything. The kind of confidence 
 that wins is that which is based upon a thorough 
 comprehension of one’s ability. 
 
 It makes no difference what we undertake—the 
 success of the effort depends largely upon the 
 manner in which we approach the task. If we 
 start out with the element of doubt predominating, 
 it is practically a foregone conclusion that we shall 
 fail. Whenever I hear a person say, “I am 
 willing to try, but I’m afraid I can’t do it,” I am 
 always tempted to reply: “What’s the use of 
 trying! ” 
 
 There is one word in the English language that 
 should be avoided most assiduously by those who 
 
46 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 hope to succeed. That is the little word “ If.” 
 Though one of the smallest, it represents a greater 
 amount of doubt and uncertainty than any word 
 in our ordinary vocabulary. Introduce the word 
 “ if ” into the conversation and its effect is felt im¬ 
 mediately. Instantly the element of doubt pre¬ 
 sents itself—at once the possibility of concentration 
 becomes impossible. 
 
 The prisoner who found a rusty nail and who 
 used it to dig his way out of prison would never 
 have succeeded in attaining his desperate purpose 
 if he had given a serious thought to the possibility 
 of failure. To carry out such a plan meant that 
 he must concentrate all his energies—that he must 
 exercise the elements of industry, patience, care, 
 courage and diplomacy—and he, knowing that he 
 possessed these faculties, did not question his 
 ability to make good. Personally, he may not 
 have argued these facts out with himself, for it is 
 not necessary that we should do this. It is suf¬ 
 ficient that we possess that self-confidence that is 
 
The Law of Concentration 
 
 47 
 
 instinctive—that self-confidence which, so far from 
 being self-conceit, is actually an innate apprecia¬ 
 tion of our own ability and a genuine incentive to 
 concentration. It is thus that the law of concen¬ 
 tration operates. 
 
■ 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 • n 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 . ! 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Law of Attention. 
 
 “ Concentration/’ in the commercial world, 
 means “ attention to business,” and the man who 
 possesses this faculty—other things being equal— 
 is the one who is most likely to succeed. It matters 
 little whether he is the employer or the employe, 
 the ability to attend strictly to the matter in hand, 
 to the exclusion of all other interests, is a prime 
 factor in the struggle for success. There are some 
 men who are able to do several things at the same 
 time and do all of them well, but that is because 
 they have their mental powers so thoroughly under 
 control that they can instantly change their point of 
 attention from one subject to another. While this 
 gift is possible of attainment, it is not easily ac¬ 
 quired, and the man who is not yet capable of 
 focusing his mind firmly upon one thing must 
 master the art of concentrating in its simple phases 
 
 49 
 
50 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 before trying experiments with more diversified 
 interests. 
 
 To give proper attention to business we must get 
 into thorough harmony with the work we have to 
 do. Emerson once said: “ We must be lovers, 
 and at once the impossible becomes possible.” 
 This is but another way of saying that a man who 
 is in love with his work is capable of achieving re¬ 
 sults that never could be attained by those who 
 performed the same kind of labor from motives in 
 which self-interest played the commanding part. 
 
 If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing 
 well, and the only way we can test our capacity 
 for achievement is by actual experiment, with this 
 end in view. Experience will teach us that the 
 difficulty in a task often depends upon the point 
 from which we view it. Sitting in an easy chair— 
 racking our brains to evolve some plan by which 
 we may accomplish our aim with the least possible 
 effort—the problem sometimes assumes gigantic 
 proportions and we tremble at the thought of the 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 51 
 
 obstacles that must be overcome. As we proceed, 
 however, the change in the perspective produces a 
 corresponding change in the appearance of the 
 object at which we have aimed, until, at last, we 
 smile to think that we should ever have hesitated 
 to attempt so simple a task. 
 
 All this tends to prove the truth of the general 
 theory that it is the man and not the business that 
 succeeds. Many men have made great financial 
 successes out of the most commonplace pursuits. 
 One laid the foundation for his fortune picking 
 over rags; another began his career selling papers 
 or shoestrings, or even by blacking shoes. In every 
 instance, however, you will find that this indi¬ 
 vidual was about the most enterprising newsboy, 
 or the best bootblack ever known. The study of 
 the life of a self-made man never fails to disclose 
 the fact that he was the kind of person who per¬ 
 sisted in doing just as good work as he knew how 
 to do, no matter in what position he found himself. 
 The moral is that success is easiest attained 
 
52 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 through merit—through the ability to turn out a 
 good job, whether it is blacking boots, keeping 
 books, managing a department store, or operating 
 a great railway system. 
 
 Carlyle tells us that genius is the capacity for 
 taking pains, and his words might be used to help 
 in formulating a definition for success, for the de¬ 
 gree of success attained invariably depends upon 
 the amount of pains the individual is willing to 
 take with his work. If he bestows a great deal 
 of care and attention upon every detail of the task, 
 he is certain to succeed—to some degree, at least. 
 
 There is no undertaking so humble that it can 
 be performed acceptably without due attention to 
 the matter of detail. Any contractor will tell you 
 that there are degrees of efficiency in digging, in 
 laying brick, or making mortar, just as there are 
 in designing the intricate plans for the construction 
 of the skyscraper. Every woman knows that the 
 laundress who is a ftiere machine, and who soaks 
 and scrubs the clothes when her mind is engaged 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 53 
 
 with other things, does not begin to do her work 
 so well as the woman who pays attention to the 
 wash-tub details. It is easy to see why the princi¬ 
 ple should grow to have more and more effect as 
 the importance of the task increases. 
 
 Attention to details, however, does not imply 
 that a man must necessarily attend to all the de¬ 
 tails himself. In any big enterprise that would 
 be impossible, for a one-man business is hemmed 
 in by restrictions that prevent its growth beyond 
 certain well-defined limits. John D. Rockefeller 
 could never have created the Standard Oil Com¬ 
 pany if he had confined himself to the details. 
 He had the genius for taking pains, but he took 
 pains to construct a perfect organization—a ma¬ 
 chine that was so complete in all its details that 
 it would run smoothly whether he was there to 
 watch it or not. Instead of spending all the 
 energy of his brain and body in sticking postage 
 stamps on letters and opening oil wells, he exer¬ 
 cised his genius in discovering and developing good 
 
54 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 men until they were able to do all this work for 
 him. 
 
 The success of Rockefeller, Morgan, Harri- 
 man, Carnegie—in fact, the success of any big 
 enterprise—is based upon the operation of this 
 law of attention. Men who are great enough to 
 create such industries are also great enough to real¬ 
 ize that their success depends upon their ability to 
 deputize the actual work of attending to details to 
 others. Not that they ever take their hand from 
 the lever. They are always within call. They 
 see that things run smoothly. It is their brains 
 that plan the work. It is their force that starts 
 the machine, but their intimate knowledge of the 
 situation tells them what duties can safely be left 
 to others, and, when they once have found the 
 right men to assume the responsibility of perform¬ 
 ing these tasks, they let them do it—and without 
 any annoying interference as long as the work is 
 being well done. 
 
 The methods that are pursued by the master- 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 55 
 
 minds in the commercial world may as easily be 
 applied to business enterprises of smaller propor¬ 
 tions. The law of attention, like every other law, 
 invariably operates in the same way, always pro¬ 
 ducing the same results. Thus, the business man 
 who has one employe whom he can trust should 
 find some means by which he can intrust him with 
 some of the details of his affairs. If he will do 
 this, his business will the quicker grow to such 
 proportions that he can afford to employ another 
 trustworthy man to whose shoulders more of the 
 details can be transferred. In doing this it is not 
 necessary that he should relax his attention in the 
 smallest vital degree. He may still keep every 
 part of the organization in his own hands, plan¬ 
 ning its future development and making his plans 
 materialize until little by little, as the natural 
 consequence of expansion, he can deputize prac¬ 
 tically all the details of the management to others, 
 charging himself merely with the supervision of the 
 work. 
 
56 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 The man who tries to charge his own mind with 
 a vast horde of details that might be left to his em¬ 
 ployes has no time, or no mind, for other things, 
 and opportunities that might otherwise be recog¬ 
 nized and seized upon, pass unnoticed. 
 
 The alert, attentive mind is of far more value 
 in the commercial world than the slow-moving, 
 absorbed mind. The latter may make fewer mis¬ 
 takes, but it misses more opportunities. It lacks 
 the initiative that is derived from physical energy 
 and self-confidence. That is the reason why the 
 boy who steps off quickly, and who has an alert, 
 active eye, is usually selected for the best posi¬ 
 tions. He may not make good—the alertness 
 may not extend far beneath the surface—in which 
 case the natural process of elimination eventually 
 places him where he belongs. But, the fact still 
 remains that his apparent capacity for attention has 
 won for him the first, and best, chance. 
 
 We should not allow ourselves to forget that 
 everything today is gauged at a high rate of speed. 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 57 
 
 and that it takes an alert mind, a quick eye and a 
 dexterous hand to keep pace with the whirl of the 
 commercial machinery. Years ago, when we were 
 running things more slowly, there was some 
 chance even for the idler, but today all but the 
 active workmen are left at the post. The modern 
 business concern has no more use for the in¬ 
 capable worker than it has for the employe who 
 sits all day with his eyes glued to the face of the 
 clock waiting for the whistle to blow. The clock 
 is still there, but it is put to a different purpose by 
 men who succeed. They refer to it simply that 
 they may see that they are not falling behind the 
 pace-maker—that they are not consuming more 
 time than is necessary in the performance of their 
 allotted tasks. 
 
 The man who oversleeps in the morning, who 
 makes it a rule to arrive at his desk a few minutes 
 late each day, may manage to keep his head above 
 water, but that is about all that he can do. You 
 never find his name mentioned in the stories of 
 
58 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 successful men that you read in the popular maga¬ 
 zines. The few minutes that he loses in getting to 
 his store, or office, or the hour or two that he 
 spends in waking up sufficiently to give proper at¬ 
 tention to his work, are the very moments that his 
 alert competitor puts to the best advantage. 
 
 A writer who must have been a philosopher 
 once wrote that “ God and nature love a hustler.” 
 Just make a note of this so that you may remember 
 it. It is as true as if you had found it in the Good 
 Book itself. In fact, the same remark is there, or 
 one very similar to it. Do you recall the passage 
 in which Christ promised that “ unto every man 
 that hath shall be given? ” You may have read 
 it without understanding it. You may even have 
 felt that it suggested a condition of injustice—the 
 idea of taking the last little bit from the man who 
 had only a little and piling the blessings upon 
 the man who already had much. I have heard 
 people make such criticisms regarding this passage, 
 but this simply indicated that they did not know 
 what it meant. 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 59 
 
 There are several laws in Nature that are as 
 inviolable as the law of gravitation, and one of 
 these laws stipulates that nothing shall stand still. 
 Things must move either this way or that, up or 
 down. In accordance with this law, every day of 
 our lives finds us either richer or poorer; either a 
 little further advanced in the fight for success, or a 
 little further down the hill. The other law is the 
 law of attraction, by which like attracts like, and 
 the two operate together to produce what we term 
 our “ good ” or “ evil ” fortune. In other words, 
 the man who gets into the right path and who 
 travels the right way finds things smoothed out 
 for him. The greater his success, the more comes 
 to him, and the blessings keep on coming just as 
 long as he continues to do the right thing in the 
 right way. 
 
 One condition that we must observe is the ne¬ 
 cessity of working as persistently as possible to¬ 
 wards one end, for no amount of hustling on our 
 part will make up for the scattering of our efforts. 
 
60 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 To win, we must select a target and aim at it as 
 straight as we can, not shoot off at a tangent in the 
 hope of hitting the bull’s-eye on some other fel¬ 
 low’s target This is in strict accordance with the 
 law which provides that you will get ten times as 
 great a result if you center all your forces upon one 
 thing as you will if you distribute this energy 
 among ten entirely different things. Thus, given 
 a proper amount of concentration, the hustler in¬ 
 variably succeeds. Philosophical writers may say 
 that God and nature love him, but it is not through 
 such favoritism as this that his success is attained. 
 He simply can’t help winning as long as he cen¬ 
 ters all his faculties upon one purpose and keeps 
 up the hustling—as long as he obeys the law. 
 
 It is important that we should realize this, for 
 our value to the world, and incidentally, to our¬ 
 selves, is based upon our ability to “ make good.” 
 It requires practically no brains to breathe. The 
 mumbling idiot in the insane asylum succeeds to 
 that extent. The functions of digestion and assim- 
 
The Law of Attention 
 
 61 
 
 ilation progress in the body of the professional 
 tramp or the inmate of the poorhouse, just as they 
 do in that of the man whose masterly mind has 
 brought millions into his strong boxes. 
 
 Each man’s progress in this world depends to a 
 large degree upon the character of the effort that 
 he is willing to make, and if he refuses to take the 
 right road, erects barriers in his own path, or hand¬ 
 icaps himself too heavily, his failure cannot prop¬ 
 erly be charged to fate. It is a disaster for which 
 he alone is to blame. 
 
 There are many ways in which we can impair 
 our own usefulness. Some of them may seem like 
 very simple handicaps—so light as to be scarcely 
 worthy of notice—yet, if we study them carefully, 
 we are certain to find that, after all, they seri¬ 
 ously interfere with our efficiency. For example, 
 there are people whose appetites are largely re¬ 
 sponsible for their lack of success in life—not the 
 appetite for strong drink alone, but the appetite 
 for food as well. I know men who eat so heartily 
 
62 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 at luncheon that they are good for nothing for sev¬ 
 eral hours. It takes all their vitality to digest their 
 food; there is nothing left to keep the brain active. 
 
 Others smoke too much; some play too much; 
 many waste their time in profitless conversation; 
 not a few are the victims of a bad disposition, for 
 any habit that may make trouble for us—that may 
 cost us something that we desire to possess, or that 
 interferes with our advancement in life—is nothing 
 more or less than a handicap and should be cast 
 off as expeditiously as possible. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Law of Faith. 
 
 No element, either mental or physical, plays so 
 important a part in promoting success as faith. 
 With faith as an actuating motive there is prac¬ 
 tically no limit to the possibility of human attain¬ 
 ment. Without faith, on the other hand, next to 
 nothing can be accomplished. 
 
 While it is not easy to fathom the mysteries of 
 the mind, recent discoveries in psychology have 
 taught us that it is a storehouse of the most power¬ 
 ful and subtle forces which may be turned to our • 
 advantage if we but learn how to use them. One 
 of these is the force which we commonly denote as 
 “ faith.” 
 
 To be a successful a man must have faith— 
 faith in his own ability to perform whatever he has 
 undertaken, and faith in the character of the act, 
 or the purpose, to be accomplished. If he does not 
 
 63 
 
 COILEQE uxttfivr 
 
 JSS&nri mi - 1 
 
 IT ha 
 
 
64 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 possess this positive force he is practically power¬ 
 less. He may have the plan, he may have the de¬ 
 sire to make that plan a reality, but, without faith, 
 he lacks the force to enable him to proceed. 
 
 Let us suppose that two men started out together 
 —one with firm faith, both in himself and in his 
 purpose; the other with no such inspiration. To 
 both, the object to be attained was equally clear. 
 Both understood what they were expected to do 
 and how they might best accomplish results. In 
 time, both of these men would meet with obstacles. 
 To one these would mean but little. “ I know 
 that I am doing the right thing! ” he would say. 
 “ I know that this is what should be done and that 
 I have the ability to do it! I am not afraid to take 
 chances, for I know I have a good grip on 
 things! ” With such thoughts to cheer him, the 
 man who had faith to help him would press on to 
 victory. Though delayed, perhaps, success for 
 such a man is inevitable, for there is no obstacle 
 that cannot be overcome in one way or another 
 when faith is the force that inspires the effort. 
 
’T'L _ T c ' • » 
 
 I 
 
 The other man, on the contrary, would face 
 his probJems from a very different viewpoint. 
 
 • W " at ; s l ^ e use ? ” he would persist, when the 
 first serious obstacle confronted him. “ I knew 
 in the beginning that I couldn’t do this work. I 
 don’t see any use in trying to do it! It’s a waste 
 
 of energy to go on! It’s a fine day—a little golf 
 wouldn’t hurt me.” 
 
 The fact that one man was just as competent as 
 the other could make no difference under such 
 conditions. Though each had the same advan¬ 
 tages, from the standpoint of education and ex¬ 
 perience, the man who had the faith would suc¬ 
 ceed while the man who had no faith would just 
 as certainly fail, though he might give an equal 
 amount of time to the work, or even expend a 
 greater amount of energy upon it. As Eliphas 
 Levi, the great French Kabbalist, writing fully a 
 century ago, said: 
 
 To accomplish anything we must believe in 
 our ability to accomplish, and this faith must be 
 
66 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 at once translated into action. Faith has no ten¬ 
 tative effort; it begins in the certainty of finishing, 
 and works calmly as though it had omnipotence 
 at its disposal and eternity before it. Dare to for¬ 
 mulate the desire, whatever it may be; then set to 
 work immediately, and cease not to act in the 
 same manner and for the same end. What you 
 wish for will take place, and has already begun 
 for you.” 
 
 Of course, if we were to give imagination full 
 sway in devising feats that would prove difficult of 
 attainment, it is not unlikely that we might even¬ 
 tually reach the plane of the impossible, yet his¬ 
 tory supplies us with so many examples of men 
 who have surmounted apparently insurmountable 
 obstacles by the strength that faith gave them, that 
 it is not easy to fix a sane boundary between pos¬ 
 sibility and impossibility. 
 
 A poor, ignorant boy, tending sheep for just 
 enough money to keep his soul in his body would 
 ordinarily be regarded as very raw material from 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 67 
 
 which to make a pope, but it was from just such a 
 beginning that Sixtus V. ascended to the papal 
 throne. 
 
 Napoleon, too, in birth and breeding, was about 
 as far removed from the throne of France as he 
 could have been, but he succeeded in raising him¬ 
 self to that station. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, walking the streets of 
 Philadelphia with a roll of bread tucked under his 
 arm, did not appear to be traveling the high road 
 to success. Probably there were those who smiled 
 at the ungainly figure, but there came a time when 
 people did not laugh at Benjamin Franklin, or at 
 anything that he had to say. They were only too 
 glad to let him do their thinking for them, that they 
 might profit by his advice. 
 
 If you could make an intimate study of the life 
 of any really successful man you would doubtless 
 find that faith and self-confidence had played the 
 most conspicuous part in shaping his career. Take, 
 as one example, the story of Cyrus W. Field’s suc¬ 
 cess in laying the transatlantic cable. 
 
68 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success’ 
 
 One who knew nothing about Cyrus W. Field’s 
 struggles might imagine that it was a very simple 
 matter for him to carry out his idea—that all he 
 had to do was to suggest the plan and then the 
 millions necessary to perform the wonderful work 
 were promptly thrown at his feet. This, however, 
 was far from the case, for, in the beginning, the 
 suggestion that it might be possible successfully to 
 operate a cable across the ocean was greeted with 
 cries of derision. Nothing daunted by the fact 
 that all the world viewed him as a half-crazed vis¬ 
 ionary, Mr. Field persisted in preaching the prac¬ 
 ticability of his project. Snubbed right and left, 
 and with doors closed in his face, he pushed on, 
 day after day, until, finally, the tide turned, as it 
 always turns when ability is backed by faith, 
 and persistence; men became wiser; they began 
 to see that they might have been mistaken, and, at 
 last, some individuals were found to advance the 
 capital needed to start the undertaking. 
 
 But, even then, the troubles of Cyrus W. Field 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 69 
 
 were not at an end. It was one thing to plan such 
 a gigantic work; it was quite a different thing to 
 carry those plans into effect. It would make a 
 long story—this tale of failure after failure and 
 break after break. The people who had put their 
 money into the scheme soon began to call them¬ 
 selves names. They said that they had always 
 known that Cyrus W. Field was a lunatic, and 
 that it commenced to look as if the world would 
 soon have a chance to call them just exactly as 
 crazy as he was. The idea of putting good hard 
 cash into such a project—actually throwing it into 
 the ocean! So they growled and stormed and 
 raged. Share after share was offered in the open 
 market by disgruntled stockholders, but no one 
 would buy them until, suddenly, a day came when 
 it was announced that Mr. Field had triumphed— 
 the cable had been laid. 
 
 It was faith and the self-confidence that breeds 
 persistence that did it. No other qualities in the 
 world would have stood such a test. Of course. 
 
70 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 Cyrus W. Field was prepared for the work. He 
 had made his plan and he knew how it could be 
 realized. In his mind the cable existed long before 
 he had raised a single dollar of the money that 
 finally laid it. He could see it stretching from 
 continent to continent, far below the surface of 
 the water, and the man did not live who could per¬ 
 suade him that such a project could not be literally 
 carried out. 
 
 The success of Cyrus W. Field is another ex¬ 
 ample in proof of the familiar optimistic theory 
 that those who have the courage to try their wings, 
 seldom fail in their attempt to fly. It is as if there 
 was a divine source of supply, unknown to us until 
 we draw upon it, but ever ready to respond to our 
 demands, giving us the strength we need to attain 
 the goal to which ambition points the way. 
 
 Science tells us that the protoplasm—the struc¬ 
 tureless, organless organism that represents the 
 lowest plane in life—has within itself the power 
 to create limbs as it requires them, thrusting them 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 71 
 
 out when locomotion becomes necessary, and with¬ 
 drawing them again when the temporary need has 
 passed. 
 
 Philosophy teaches us that a strong purpose—a 
 determined desire that recognizes no defeat—soon 
 finds a means to accomplishment, which is but an¬ 
 other way of saying that, given faith and persis¬ 
 tence, all things become possible. Or, as Emerson 
 has more poetically expressed it: “If a god 
 wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and 
 shoot out winged feet.” 
 
 Even the most hide-bound materialist should be 
 compelled to admit the truth of his own experi¬ 
 ences, and, if he will do this, he cannot deny that 
 the courage, confidence and strength that are bred 
 by faith and fostered by self-confidence are the 
 strongest of the world’s positive forces—the crea¬ 
 tive factors in life—whereas fear of possible con¬ 
 sequences, distrust of our own abilities, or doubt 
 concerning the rightness of the cause in which we 
 are engaged, are the negative forces that interfere 
 
72 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 with and prevent the realization of even the high¬ 
 est purposes. 
 
 The knowledge that we contain within ourselves 
 the forces that make for success, and that we have 
 only to exercise them rightly to rise above the plane 
 of mediocrity, should be the greatest source of in¬ 
 spiration that we can have. If all ambitions are 
 capable of achievement, why should we not hitch 
 our wagon to the stars? 
 
 And what difference does it make if we cannot 
 understand, and science cannot explain, the nature 
 of the laws that make such attainments possible? 
 We do not comprehend how these higher forces 
 operate, but we can see the effect of their opera¬ 
 tion, and that should be sufficient. To decline to 
 take advantage of their beneficent aid because they 
 are beyond our present understanding would be as 
 senseless as to refuse to utilize the power of elec¬ 
 tricity because it is still one of life’s mysterious 
 forces. We cannot see electricity. We are just 
 beginning to realize how we can make use of it to 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 73 
 
 our benefit, yet we know that it is one of our great¬ 
 est blessings. So, too, the great powers that faith 
 in a high purpose calls into being supply us with 
 the force upon which success largely depends. 
 Why should we question its power when we wit¬ 
 ness its operations, even though we cannot put our 
 hand upon the reservoir from which it is derived? 
 
 Great as this force may be, however, the very 
 fact that patience, or persistence, is so vital a fac¬ 
 tor to success, makes it obvious that we must not 
 expect that our ambitions are to be realized at 
 once, no matter how much faith we may have in 
 them, or how consistently we may demand them. 
 
 It is natural to be impatient. We want what 
 we want, and we want it now—not a month or a 
 year from now, but at once, that we may proceed 
 to enjoy it without delay. Common as this feel¬ 
 ing is, it is anything but a virtue. Instead of bring¬ 
 ing our desires nearer to realization, it is not un¬ 
 likely to delay the day of their attainment, for 
 the mental attitude that impatience creates exerts 
 
74 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 so scattering an effect upon our energies that their 
 force is necessarily weakened. 
 
 Lessons are not agreeable things at best, and 
 many of them are difficult to master, but here is 
 one that must be learned—simply because experi¬ 
 ence is driving it home to us every day—and the 
 sooner we learn it the easier of attainment success 
 will be. Getting into a stew because the things 
 we want persist in hanging fire does not help us. 
 It does no good to lose our temper and swear at 
 our ill fortune. It weakens, rather than strength¬ 
 ens us to worry and fret when things don’t happen 
 just the way we would have them turn out, but the 
 ability to realize this truth does not come to us until 
 we have learned the lesson that patient waiting is 
 one of the most valuable aids to persistent effort. 
 
 At the same time it is necessary that we should 
 remember that there is a great difference between 
 the patience that comes from contentment and that 
 which is due to satisfaction. “ Contentment ” is 
 the one element in life that is absolutely necessary 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 75 
 
 to happiness. It keeps the mind calm and hopeful 
 without shutting the door to opportunity and bar¬ 
 ring the way to further success. It is “ satisfac¬ 
 tion ” that exerts a stultifying effect upon future 
 effort and that prevents us from seeking for 
 things that are better than those which we now 
 possess. 
 
 If Edison had been satisfied to remain a tele¬ 
 graph operator all his life, he would never have at¬ 
 tained the position of usefulness that he occupies 
 today. However contented he may have been— 
 and he was never an individual who let ill fortune 
 make him miserable—he was still sufficiently dis¬ 
 satisfied with his lot to get out and hustle for some¬ 
 thing better. 
 
 When a man is satisfied to stay just where he 
 is, there is no place in his soul for aspiration. 
 Though opportunity may knock at his door every 
 hour of the day and night, he slumbers on as 
 peacefully as a dead bug in amber. Contentment, 
 on the contrary, is vitalizing, for the possession of 
 
76 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 this quality does not in any respect detract from 
 the strength of the desire to push forward to some¬ 
 thing higher. A man is able to “ make the best 
 of things ” and still keep his eyes open and his ears 
 alert for the better chance that is to give him an 
 opportunity to scale the heights that he is now un¬ 
 able to ascend. 
 
 It is only the student who has delved deeply 
 into all phases of the world’s history who can 
 tell how much we owe to dissatisfaction. To¬ 
 day, if we desire to communicate with persons at 
 the other ends of the earth, we have speedy and 
 luxurious means of transportation; or, if it is not 
 necessary that we should talk with them face to 
 face, we have even quicker methods of transmit¬ 
 ting our messages. Business transactions which 
 would have required months, if not years, for their 
 completion one hundred years ago, may now be at¬ 
 tended to in as many days at the most. It was 
 man’s dissatisfaction with his slow means of com¬ 
 munication that brought these things about. It is 
 
 i 
 
The Law of Faith 
 
 77 
 
 his dissatisfaction at his inability to fly that is solv¬ 
 ing the problems of aviation. The day we become 
 satisfied with what we have attained, we stop—so 
 far as we are able to stop—the vibrations that 
 make for life. On that day we write the word 
 “ finis ” to our list of achievements—from that mo¬ 
 ment the process of disintegration and decay be¬ 
 gins. 
 
 And all this teaches us that there is a force 
 within ourselves that makes for success. To set it 
 in operation we must first believe in ourselves—in 
 our capacity to do the work we have planned to 
 do. Then, the match of grim determination must 
 be applied, and the fire must be fed by persistent 
 effort, for even the highest ambition will fail of 
 realization if it is not made the sole purpose of all 
 our energies. 
 
 Have you ever attempted to stop a brook that 
 was on its way to the sea? You can dam the 
 brook, but it will overflow the dam if there is no 
 opening through it. To keep the water from 
 
78 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 reaching the goal for which it started you are ob¬ 
 liged to build a reservoir and supply it with pipes 
 as outlets for the water that feeds it. 
 
 This is a good illustration of the conditions that 
 exist when a man starts in the right way to accom¬ 
 plish something that he believes to be worth while. 
 You may put obstacles in his path, but he will go 
 over them, through them, or around them, for you 
 can depend upon it that the right kind of man will 
 find the right way to get the better of the most 
 stupendous obstacle which you can set in front of 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Law of Self-Reliance. 
 
 To take the raw opportunities that come to us 
 and mold them into a definite success it is neces¬ 
 sary that we should retain in our make-up a certain 
 degree of egotism. We must, at least, have suffi¬ 
 cient respect for ourselves to realize that we can do 
 good work, and sufficient strength of character to 
 be able to defend our work when we know that it 
 is good. 
 
 For many generations man has been taught to 
 believe that there are few offenses against decency 
 that are more deplorable than the iniquity of 
 “ blowing his own horn.” He has been urged to 
 let others sound his praises while he concealed his 
 light modestly under a measure, and, frequently, 
 these maxims have been interpreted far too liter¬ 
 ally. The successful men of this day are those 
 who not only know that they are competent to 
 
 79 
 
80 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 perform unusual deeds but who do not hesitate to 
 call the attention of other people to their ability in 
 this direction. 
 
 There is scarcely a leader of men in any field of 
 human activity who has not ascended from a com¬ 
 paratively lowly position. That these men are 
 now at the top of the ladder is a fact that is due 
 to a combination of circumstances for which they 
 themselves have been largely responsible. Had 
 they been content to toil behind the counter of a 
 country store, or had they been willing to sit all 
 day perched upon a high stool, before a huge desk 
 weighted down with ledgers and journals and day¬ 
 books, they might have remained in just such 
 places until old age came to release them from 
 their self-imposed burdens. An opportunity ar¬ 
 rived when they could assert themselves, however, 
 and, fortunately, they had sufficient egotism to em¬ 
 brace it. 
 
 The commonplace phrases in praise of “ mod¬ 
 est merit ” read well in the copy books, but, as the 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 81 
 
 commercial world is now constituted, modesty is 
 not always a valuable asset. If we were to at¬ 
 tempt to conduct our business life upon such prin¬ 
 ciples we should end by making ourselves ridic¬ 
 ulous. To call attention to our special abilities, 
 however, does not mean that it is necessary that we 
 should go upon the housetop and blow our horn 
 so loudly that all the world would be deafened. 
 It does not mean that we must stand out in the 
 center of the road, boasting about the wonderful 
 deeds that we have done, or bragging of the ex¬ 
 traordinary achievements that we think we may 
 some time accomplish. If we are convinced that 
 we already have a considerable achievement to 
 our credit, there is no ethical reason why we should 
 not say so—in a quiet, gentlemanly fashion—and 
 if there is any way by which we can make that 
 particular achievement redound further to our ad¬ 
 vantage, no false sentiment of so-called modesty 
 should be permitted to dissuade us from making 
 the most of it. 
 
82 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 A reasonable amount of egotism is necessary 
 in constructing a successful career, yet this factor 
 loses its beneficent qualities as soon as it has passed 
 its proper limitations. A constructive force at first, 
 it becomes a destructive force if carried to excess. 
 Like many of the medicinal substances mentioned 
 in the pharmacopoeia, egotism may be made to 
 preserve or to destroy. 
 
 To define the sane limits of egotism is not a 
 difficult matter. Its proper bounds are clearly 
 marked by “ truth,” for the man who adheres to 
 the whole truth in exploiting his own abilities is in 
 little danger of going too far. To speak of the 
 merits that we actually possess is not the crime that 
 it is to boast about qualities that exist only in the 
 imagination, for it is more dangerous to hide our 
 lights beneath a cloak of timidity than it is to blow 
 our own horns frankly when we know that we 
 possess the capacity for great achievements. 
 
 There is a disease to which the French physi¬ 
 cians have given an extremely expressive name— 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 83 
 
 “ The Folly of Doubt.” We may not recognize 
 the ailment by this title, yet the American people 
 are quite as subject to it as their more tempera¬ 
 mental cousin, the Frenchman. As a matter of 
 fact, there is no more deleterious influence in mod¬ 
 ern life than this quality of mind. If you are 
 subject to it, if you feel doubtful as to your ability 
 to succeed in an enterprise that you have under¬ 
 taken, it is safe to predict that your worst fears 
 will be realized. Failure becomes almost as cer¬ 
 tain as if it were preordained. 
 
 It is a generally admitted fact that we get just 
 about what we look for in this world. If we look 
 for health, we are far more likely to find it than 
 we would be if we were to spend our time in an 
 introspective search for obscure aches or pains. If 
 we look for happiness and faith and love and suc¬ 
 cess, the chances of realizing these qualities are 
 far greater than they would be if we were to face 
 the world with bitter complainings, or with hatred, 
 injustice, uncharitableness, and all the other 
 
84 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 demons of doubt in full possession of our soul. To 
 believe that we are to enjoy health and happiness 
 and every sort of material success is half the 
 battle. If we are not on the lookout for these 
 things we stand a very poor chance of finding 
 them. 
 
 Doubt acts like a wet blanket upon every kind 
 of endeavor. If not actually a poison—in the 
 chemical sense of the word—its action is just as 
 injurious when not suppressed. The successful 
 man is invariably a self-confident man, sometimes 
 almost an egotist. You may not approve of all his 
 methods, but there is no “ folly of doubt ” in his 
 blood. When he puts his hand to the plough 
 there is no turning back until the end of the fur¬ 
 row has been reached. Although he may take 
 some pretty big risks, he is not a gambler with 
 fate. It is not upon chance that he stakes his all, 
 but upon his belief in his own ability to “ make 
 good.” And he does make good. Belief in him¬ 
 self makes him strike with confidence. There is 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 85 
 
 no doubt, no hesitation, no half-heartedness in such 
 a blow. 
 
 The conduct of the unsuccessful man—the men¬ 
 tal viewpoint that he assumes in looking at things— 
 places him in direct antithesis to the man who suc¬ 
 ceeds. Where the latter planted, with perfect con¬ 
 fidence that the harvest would repay him for his 
 expenditures of money and time and energy, the 
 former wraps himself in the cold, wet blanket of 
 doubt, thus chilling and devitalizing the seed be¬ 
 fore it has been planted. 
 
 There are two ways in which a thing may be 
 done: the right way and the wrong way. The 
 right way goes straight to the point, accomplish¬ 
 ing the maximum result with the minimum expen¬ 
 diture of effort; the wrong way falters as if un¬ 
 certain as to the direction to take, with the result 
 that both time and energy are lost in debating a 
 point that might otherwise be settled in an instant. 
 Thus, many men have failed, not because their 
 ideas were not good, but simply for the reason that 
 
86 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 they lacked the self-reliance necessary to put them 
 into operation. With another grain of egotism in 
 their nature they would have had courage enough 
 to take the plunge, even though it required assum¬ 
 ing a certain degree of risk. 
 
 It is strength that wins in the commercial world 
 today—the strength that is inspired by confident 
 reliance upon ourselves and upon the purpose to 
 which we have bent our efforts. Strength such as 
 this comes from positive thoughts and positive 
 methods. Weak people always lean heavily on 
 others. They borrow other people’s methods and 
 yet evolve none of their own. Given an opportun¬ 
 ity to make good, they are usually afraid to accept 
 it. Fearful of the possibility of failure, they have 
 not sufficient love of self, or respect for self, to 
 give them the strength to win. 
 
 Such a man may be able to do what he is told 
 to do, and those who are in need of this particular 
 kind of machine may utilize his services as long as 
 they are of value. His employers do not keep 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 87 
 
 him on their pay-roll very long, however. Despite 
 all he can seem to do, his jobs slip away from him 
 a little more easily than he can replace them. The 
 trouble is that no one regards him as a permanent 
 fixture. 
 
 Self-reliance has an air of its own. It shows 
 itself in the eye of the man who possesses it—in the 
 poise of his shoulders—in the way in which he 
 walks. He steps off firmly—positively—and 
 those who meet him are instantly impressed by the 
 belief that here is a man who is capable of assum¬ 
 ing responsibilities. Let that idea once get abroad, 
 and his place in the world is assured. 
 
 At the same time, all these ends are defeated if 
 the element of egotism is permitted to become the 
 dominant note in the character of the person pos¬ 
 sessing it, for the moment that self-confidence be¬ 
 comes self-complacence it defeats itself and its 
 usefulness is ended. Self-complacence is an at¬ 
 tribute of weakness, not of strength. Instead of 
 aiding in the attainment of success, its tendency is 
 
88 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 to interfere with and actually prevent the accom¬ 
 plishment of results. Just as satisfaction with our 
 present position in life makes it practically impos¬ 
 sible for us to climb higher, so the element of self- 
 complacence puts a check upon all future en¬ 
 deavor. In a word, all the tendencies of the self- 
 complacent spirit are directly opposed to those of 
 the self-confident spirit. One is at one extreme; 
 the other at another. 
 
 Self-complacence is nothing more than the 
 manifestation of the spirit of self-satisfaction. The 
 self-complacent man is thoroughly satisfied with 
 himself. If the position he occupies is not just 
 what he would like to fill, he blames other people 
 for his failure to succeed—never himself. The 
 self-complacent man is usually afflicted with a sort 
 of mental strabismus which prevents him from get¬ 
 ting a true view of the proportion of things. As 
 the result, he almost invariably possesses a dis¬ 
 torted idea of life—a false impression of the rela- 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 89 
 
 tionship that exists between himself and other in¬ 
 dividuals with whom he has business associations. 
 
 One of the most dangerous tendencies of self- 
 complacency is that it is apt to engender the feel¬ 
 ing of omniscience. Thus, for example, the man 
 who has succeeded in making a fortune by run¬ 
 ning a dry goods store, or who has attained fame 
 as a plumber, often develops the feeling that he 
 is as good a judge upon other questions as he is in 
 matters relating to his own trade. The man who 
 is an expert chemist, or draughtsman, may be as 
 ignorant of ordinary commercial affairs as the child 
 at school; yet, because he is regarded as a “ won¬ 
 der ” in his own line of business, it requires but a 
 small injection of the element of self-complacence 
 to make him feel that he is capable of running one 
 of the big commercial houses, or industrial plants, 
 far more successfully than it has yet been done. 
 
 As the natural result, the self-complacent in¬ 
 dividual is frequently led into dire misfortunes by 
 the false ideas of his own astuteness. The fact 
 
90 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 that he knows one thing thoroughly does not imply 
 that he should know all things equally well. Self- 
 reliance is the wise, healthful trust in ourselves that 
 gives us the power to fight life’s battles success¬ 
 fully. Self-complacence is the force of inspira¬ 
 tion that makes the fool rush in where angels 
 would fear to tread. 
 
 Pride, like egotism, may easily be carried to ex¬ 
 cess, but, like egotism, it, too, is necessary if we are 
 to lift ourselves out of the commonplace ruts of life 
 in which so many has-beens and never-have-beens 
 are hopelessly foundered. It is pride that helps a 
 man put a proper valuation upon himself, and, as 
 experience has taught us, the individual who un¬ 
 dervalues his own ability is pretty apt to be gen¬ 
 erously kicked and cuffed by his more successful, 
 though less modest, fellows. 
 
 As we well know, the world is in the habit of 
 taking a great many things for granted. It goes 
 much by appearances, and, while we may deplore 
 this fact, it is our duty to take advantage of it as 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 91 
 
 long as such conditions continue to exist. We may 
 not go so far as to assert that it is the clothes that 
 make the man, yet, however generous and charit¬ 
 able we may strive to be, we must admit, if we 
 are honest, that carelessness, or slovenliness, in the 
 matter of attire invariably leaves a most unfavor¬ 
 able impression. 
 
 In one respect, at least, it is right that this should 
 be so. If a man does not value himself at a suffi¬ 
 ciently high figure to be careful about the condition 
 of his apparel, there is something radically wrong 
 with him. We may not be able to purchase the 
 most costly raiment offered in the shops, but we 
 can at least be neat. A patched shoe loses more 
 them half its ill effect when it is well polished. A 
 frayed cuff, or a shiny coat sleeve, may be over¬ 
 looked if the cuff is clean and the coat thoroughly 
 brushed. It is pride that insists that the cuff shall 
 be clean; it is pride that brushes our coat and 
 shines our shoes for us. 
 
92 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 The man who values himself highly never com¬ 
 mits mean and degrading acts. He thinks too 
 much of his own honor to be dishonorable to 
 others. He takes too much pleasure in maintain¬ 
 ing a good reputation to go out of his way to do 
 the despicable little things that so many persons 
 habitually perform. It is when he begins to value 
 himself lightly—to undervalue himself, perhaps 
 —that he commences to drink too much, or to 
 commit other acts that make his acquaintances look 
 down upon him. As in the case of egotism, pride 
 that is carried to excess may become a decidedly 
 disagreeable quality, and a serious handicap in 
 the contest for success; yet, even this does not alter 
 the fact that a certain amount of pride is abso¬ 
 lutely necessary if we are to maintain a command¬ 
 ing place in the world. 
 
 To most men the business world offers, in the 
 beginning, merely a humble position. Some few 
 have wealth and place thrust upon them through 
 the accident of birth, but, though they may step 
 
The Law of Self-Reliance 
 
 93 
 
 into the thick of the fight well toward the top of 
 the ladder, they do not always stay there. To 
 secure genuine and lasting success, the best start¬ 
 ing place is at the bottom. Then, the ability to 
 ascend becomes largely a matter of individual 
 effort. If the man is content with small things 
 like a mere living, he can stay where he is and let 
 the procession go by, but if he has a reasonable 
 amount of pride and egotism, he is not likely to 
 remain at the bottom very long. Few of us like 
 to feel that others are enjoying the cream and 
 caviare of life while we have nothing better than 
 onion soup for our portion, especially when we, 
 too, may have the best of everything—if we are 
 willing to work in the right way. 
 
I 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Law of Courage. 
 
 Take all the mistakes that we are likely to 
 make in life; bunch them together, and multiply 
 their combined force by three; the evil effect pro¬ 
 duced would still fall short of that which is ex¬ 
 erted by a discouraged state of mind. Discour¬ 
 agement is another word for “ letting go.” To 
 “ let go ” means to stop trying. When we become 
 discouraged, therefore, we stop trying—that is all! 
 But, could anything be worse? 
 
 Let us imagine that we are in control of a great 
 electricity-producing machine; that the machine is 
 running at full speed, and that we stand with a 
 hand on the switchboard by which this stupendous 
 motive force is to be sent in various directions. 
 By throwing every switch open this power would 
 be distributed evenly through the entire system of 
 conductors. By closing a switch here and there 
 
 95 
 
96 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 we should be able to stop the power from going to 
 certain portions of the building. With every one 
 of the switches closed, the power would be shut 
 off completely. The wires would be there—the 
 conductors—but the machinery at the other end 
 would be silent, because the switches at the 
 board remained closed. 
 
 Our bodies represent a sort of machine for the 
 production of a kind of dynamic force, which, for 
 the sake of the illustration, we may designate as 
 electricity. From head to foot this body is wired 
 with a complete system of conducting arteries and 
 nerves, running to and from the brain, for, in this 
 piece of human mechanism, it is the brain that per¬ 
 forms the services of a switchboard. When we 
 determine to carry out a specific action, the order, 
 received at the switchboard, is carried out through 
 the opening of the proper switch, the success or 
 failure of the effort depending entirely upon the 
 amount of energy sent upon the performance of 
 this particular duty. 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 97 
 
 When we are filled with hope and courage, 
 when we are eager to perform a specific act, and 
 are quite certain that we can do it well, the right 
 switch is thrown wide open and the force we re¬ 
 quire is sent pulsing through the conductors. Let 
 the element of discouragement enter, however, and 
 the effect is different. Instead of being confident 
 as to the result, the intelligence at the switchboard 
 hesitates. The command to turn on the switch 
 comes in such a faltering, uncertain tone that there 
 is a question about obeying, it. At one moment 
 the hand rises towards the switchboard. Then a 
 thought intrudes. “ Oh, what’s the use! ” it pro¬ 
 tests. “ Nothing will come of it anyway! ” So 
 the hand falls again, and the switch remains 
 closed. 
 
 In other words, the electricity is there, but it 
 might just as well not be there for all the good it 
 does. Instead of flashing along the wires, carry¬ 
 ing the call to action to every section of this in¬ 
 tricate system, the force fails to respond, and there 
 
98 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 is inertia. In this life it is hope and courage that 
 give the positive motive force to all our actions; it 
 is fear and discouragement that stultify our best 
 intentions. 
 
 Of course, the time sometimes comes to every 
 one when, temporarily at least, he is compelled 
 to admit defeat. Though our proposition may 
 seem thoroughly practicable and our plans so well 
 arranged that we know exactly what we want to 
 do and how we should go to work to accomplish 
 the desired results, the realization of the end we 
 long to attain seems impossible. It is true that it 
 may be our own fault, or it may be the fault of 
 some other person. Whatever the difficulty, how¬ 
 ever—wherever the trouble may lie—the fact is 
 apparent; temporary defeat stares us in the face. 
 
 Such setbacks are anything but agreeable to 
 contemplate. It is humiliating to lose at any game 
 that we play. Most of us discovered this fact 
 years ago. Even as small boys, when the issue 
 was nothing greater than a baseball game on the 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 99 
 
 corner lot, the desire to win was so strong within 
 us that we scarcely dared to meet the inquiring 
 faces of our friends when defeat had occurred as 
 the result of our efforts. 
 
 At the same time, if we were made of the right 
 kind of material, we learned a lesson in those days 
 that we have never forgotten, and that has never 
 ceased to exert an influence for courage in our 
 lives. We learned that today’s defeat is not nec¬ 
 essarily an eternal disgrace. We learned that 
 there was another day coming and that the losses 
 and humiliations of today might be wiped out by 
 the victory of tomorrow. 
 
 As long as a man can maintain this attitude to¬ 
 wards the affairs of life there is little danger that 
 he will meet with fatal disaster on the road to suc¬ 
 cess. As long as he can preserve the sentiment of 
 cheerfulness and self-confidence the troubles that 
 overtake him will prove little more than temporary 
 obstacles. It is only when the element of discour- 
 
100 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 l 
 
 agement commences to intrude that the defeat 
 threatens to become a permanent affair. 
 
 It is courage that enables us to win the battles 
 of the business world—the courage that all strong 
 men possess. It is discouragement that makes suc¬ 
 cess impossible. If you are afraid of any partic¬ 
 ular thing, such a fear begins to minimize the effect 
 of your effort the moment it takes possession of the 
 mind. To begin an undertaking with fear of fail¬ 
 ure is a reasonable assurance that the failure will 
 follow. The man who is always afraid of being 
 cheated—who is forever looking for dishonesty in 
 others—usually meets the very experience he has 
 anticipated. It is almost as though such opera¬ 
 tions were in accord with a law of cause and effect 
 —as though there was an actual law like gravita¬ 
 tion at work in the matter, making like attract like 
 in these things just as it does in many other phases 
 of life. 
 
 There are men in the bread-line, or sleeping on 
 the park benches, who are fitted to occupy places 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 101 
 
 of some responsibility in the world, and who owe 
 their failure to the fact that they have given way 
 to discouraging conditions. Once, in every prob¬ 
 ability, many of these men faced the world with 
 courage and self-confidence. They believed in 
 themselves. They believed in their ability to win 
 the battles of life. When the chance came to them 
 to make good—the opportunity for which they 
 had been waiting so anxiously—they may have 
 marched bravely to the attack. Unfortunately, 
 however, something occurred that turned the tide 
 of events against them. Through some fault of 
 their own, or because of a combination of circum¬ 
 stances over which they were able to exercise no 
 control, their first battle was lost. 
 
 Common sense would naturally suggest that 
 such a defeat be treated as a temporary mishap, 
 not as a permanent disaster, and when this atti¬ 
 tude is assumed there is little danger to be feared. 
 It is when the verdict is accepted as final that the 
 dangerous element enters, and the discouragement 
 
102 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 becomes fatal. The story of the career of the 
 great American, George Washington, teaches us 
 that no straits are so desperate as to afford an ex¬ 
 cuse for the exhibition of personal cowardice. 
 Few men have been so sorely tested as he was dur¬ 
 ing the winter of 1777-8, yet neither the ruin that 
 stared him in the face nor the shadow of the gal¬ 
 lows that seemed so certainly to await him, awoke 
 the slightest taint of cowardice in his soul. It is 
 such incidents in the lives of others—and the pages 
 of history are filled with them—that emphasize 
 the folly of giving up. They prove that luck is 
 never so bad as to be hopeless and when we have 
 mastered this truth—and not until then—are we 
 fit to go out to do battle with the world. 
 
 The solution of the problem of success depends 
 almost entirely upon the make-up of the individual 
 whose future is in the balance. If a man has no 
 particular talent for anything, if he has nothing 
 more than ordinary courage, ordinary initiative, 
 and ordinary persistence, he will never lift himself 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 103 
 
 above the rank of ordinary men. If he chooses a 
 profession, he will play the part of an ordinary 
 practitioner. In business his career will ever be a 
 struggle to make ends meet. Fearing failure, he 
 will attract failure; anticipating misfortunes, he 
 will meet them more than half way. 
 
 There are people who are so lacking in courage 
 that $ 15 a week is about as much as they dare to 
 earn. They may not realize that they are labor¬ 
 ing under such a handicap. They may even com¬ 
 plain of the ill fortune that pursues them, keeping 
 them down when they are so eager to rise. Let a 
 new opportunity open the door to them, however, 
 and, figuratively at least, they begin to tremble. 
 Instantly the fear-element takes possession of them 
 and they commence to wonder what will happen if 
 they should once more fail to succeed. 
 
 A young man who faces life with this frame of 
 mind might just as well take the first position that 
 presents itself and then quietly proceed to grow 
 old in it. Unless he can overcome this innate fear 
 
104 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 of the future he will have no future worth boast¬ 
 ing about. 
 
 Take the case of Belvedere Brooks, the gen¬ 
 eral manager of the Western Union Telegraph 
 Company, as an illustration. Suppose he had 
 been made of this sort of material. He began at 
 the very bottom, as a messenger boy in a country 
 telegraph station. Being unwilling to remain a 
 messenger boy any longer than was absolutely 
 necessary, he mastered the art of sending messages. 
 This was a natural thing for an ambitious boy to 
 do, but suppose that Mr. Brooks had stopped 
 there. Suppose he had said, “ Why, I know good 
 telegraph operators who are still working for $ 15 
 a week. I don’t think such a future is worth fight¬ 
 ing for. I guess I’d better quit telegraphy and 
 take up plumbing as a means of livelihood.” 
 
 If he had argued in this way, he might have be¬ 
 come a good plumber but he would never have be¬ 
 come the general manager of this great telegraph 
 company. And, this argument, had he resorted 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 105 
 
 to it, might have seemed a logical one. There 
 were, and still are, men of considerable ability 
 who find it hard to make a living as telegraphers. 
 If you were to become acquainted with them, 
 however, you could probably put your finger on 
 the source of their failure. In some cases it is bad 
 habits; in others it is lack of initiative; in many in¬ 
 stances, it is lack of courage, but invariably, the 
 fault lies within the man himself. It is one of the 
 absolutely inviolable laws of life that the man who 
 is gauged at $15-a-week capacity is never able to 
 rise far above it—not because he couldn’t rise if 
 he tried, but simply for the reason that he lacks 
 the attributes that make it easy for him to try 
 in the right way. 
 
 If the doctrines of the fatalists were true, or if 
 Dame Chance alone presided over the destinies of 
 men, we might assume that our own mental atti¬ 
 tude could make little difference as to the net re¬ 
 sults of our actions. If things “ just happened ” 
 and good and bad fortune were governed wholly 
 
106 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 by such a vague statute as the law of averages, 
 there might be some excuse for discouragement, 
 but as things are now ordained, success and fail¬ 
 ure depend upon entirely different principles. The 
 fortune that we now call “ luck ” is almost entirely 
 a matter of hard and conscientious work, honest 
 and thorough preparation for that work, and punc¬ 
 tuality in turning it out. 
 
 While the man who is ignorant of mechanical 
 methods might find it impossible to construct a 
 practicable piece of machinery, or one who was 
 ignorant of the laws of literary construction might 
 fail in his effort to turn out a readable novel or a 
 presentable play, persistent and conscientious work 
 will open any field of activity to almost any man. 
 Few are more ignorant than Elihu Burritt was in 
 his youth. The Rev. Robert Collyer could 
 scarcely write his name when a young man. Yet, 
 when the desire for knowledge took possession of 
 these men, their ignorance did not prove an insur¬ 
 mountable barrier to their ambition. It was a fal- 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 107 
 
 tering kind of progress at first, for even ambition 
 sometimes finds it hard to fly, but, in the end, it in¬ 
 variably masters the art. Elihu Burritt became 
 known as the “ learned blacksmith.” Robert 
 Collyer still preaches in one of New York’s great 
 churches. Such stories of success snatched out of 
 the lap of adversity make us realize how foolish it 
 is to regard any kind of achievement as impossible, 
 especially in view of the fact that even courage 
 itself is a quality that can be cultivated. 
 
 To acquire the kind of courage that is so neces¬ 
 sary to success, the first requirement is to learn to 
 act deliberately. The very fact that we hurry 
 indicates that we are afraid of something—afraid 
 that we shall be too late, or that others will obtain 
 more than their share. In order that we may 
 hurry, we neglect things that we ought to do, or 
 do things that we would not dream of doing if we 
 had but taken time to think before we acted so 
 hastily. 
 
108 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 To overcome this “ hurry habit ” one must cul¬ 
 tivate the habit of deliberation by learning to do 
 one thing at a time. Thus, when you are reading, 
 you must see that your mind is so firmly fixed upon 
 your book that it is impossible for you to think of 
 anything else. Don’t read with part of your mind 
 and think about the work you are to do tomorrow 
 with the other part of your mind. Put your whole 
 mind upon the act in which you are engaged and 
 banish every other thought. If the mind is per¬ 
 mitted to acquire the habit of “ wool gathering ” 
 —wandering away into all sorts of remote pas¬ 
 tures—it is absurd to expect that it will be with 
 us at the moment when we most need it, and, as 
 one cannot be courageous without presence of 
 mind, the wisdom of cultivating this mental qual¬ 
 ity is obvious. 
 
 To illustrate the importance of this mental atti¬ 
 tude we might recall the story that Miss Churchill 
 tells of the Revolutionary officer who saved him- 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 109 
 
 self from arrest and possible execution as a spy by 
 courage and presence of mind. Riding through 
 the country he suddenly found himself confronted 
 by a regiment of British soldiers. Approaching 
 them at good speed, he demanded, in tones of au¬ 
 thority: “What troops are these?” “The 
 
 Royal Scots,” was the reply. “ Royal Scots re¬ 
 main as you are! ” he commanded, and the sol¬ 
 diers unsuspiciously sat there while he turned and 
 rode toward the American lines. 
 
 This incident not only indicates the value of 
 perfect co-operation between courage and presence 
 of mind, but it also shows that one may act de¬ 
 liberately without acting slowly. Indeed, such de¬ 
 liberation as one would acquire by these methods 
 of training would be certain to lead to more rap¬ 
 idity in both thought and action, for deliberation 
 has none of the elements of uncertainty about it. 
 It is the process by which the mind, through per¬ 
 fect concentration, most speedily arrives at the 
 solution of its problems. 
 
 B ° S ™ N COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
no 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 And, don’t forget that the attitude maintained 
 by the physical body also has a positive effect for 
 good or evil upon the mind. Years before Pro¬ 
 fessor William James first published the result of 
 his experiments, Maudsley and Halleck advanced 
 very much the same theory, stating that the specific 
 muscular action that accompanies an emotion is 
 not only an expression of the thought but a vital 
 part of it. This is simply another way of saying 
 that we have the power within us to cultivate any 
 mental attribute that we may select—that we can 
 make ourselves happy or unhappy, courageous or 
 cowardly just as we may elect. It is an interest¬ 
 ing idea, and if you are one of those doubting 
 Thomases who can never see “ anything in it,” 
 follow the advice of Dr. Woods Hutchinson, a 
 reputable member of the regular medical profes¬ 
 sion, and test this theory yourself. 
 
 “To what extent muscular contraction condi¬ 
 tions emotions,” he says, “ may be tested easily by 
 a quaint and simple little experiment upon a group 
 
The Law of Courage 
 
 111 
 
 of the smallest voluntary muscles of the body— 
 those that move the eyeballs. Choose some time 
 when you are sitting quietly in your room, free 
 from all disturbing influences. Then stand up 
 and, assuming an easy position, cast your eyes up¬ 
 ward, and keep them in that pose for thirty sec¬ 
 onds. Instantly and involuntarily you will be con¬ 
 scious of a tendency toward reverential, devo¬ 
 tional, contemplative ideas and thoughts. Then 
 turn the eyes sideways, glancing towards the right 
 or the left, through half-closed lids. Within 
 thirty seconds images of suspicion, of uneasiness, 
 or of dislike will rise unbidden to the mind. Turn 
 your eyes to one side and slightly downward and 
 suggestions of jealousy or coquetry will be apt to 
 spring unbidden to the thoughts. Direct your 
 gaze towards the floor and you will likely go off 
 into a fit of reverie or abstraction.” 
 
 If it is true that the physical position is to so 
 great a degree reflected in the mind, we should 
 not neglect to make our attitude toward life con- 
 
112 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 tribute to the success to which we have set our as¬ 
 pirations. If the assumption of courage is to help 
 us win our battle against cowardice, that is the 
 attitude which we should assume, so that—with 
 head erect, shoulders back, and a firm, decisive 
 gait—we may the more surely push on to victory. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Law of Economy. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to practice economy in 
 these days, for there probably never was a time 
 when there were more, or greater, enticements de¬ 
 signed expressly to separate a man from his money. 
 Undoubtedly there have always been extravagant 
 people—some of the world’s worst spendthrifts 
 lived and rioted many centuries ago—but the idea 
 which we now express by the term “ extrava¬ 
 gance ” could have had no general application up 
 to a very recent period. When money was so 
 difficult to secure that the ordinary individual felt 
 the need of looking twice at a penny before spend¬ 
 ing it, the lessons of economy were more easily 
 learned and more widely heeded. Since money 
 commenced to be more plentiful, however, ways 
 innumerable have been devised for helping the 
 
 113 
 
114 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 man with a salary, or the wage earner, to get 
 rid of his surplus cash. 
 
 If conditions have changed in this respect, if 
 the markets are filled with a new and more costly 
 class of goods to tempt us to wastefulness, the 
 conditions of life are still as hard as ever they 
 were, and obedience to the law of economy is just 
 as necessary. There may be times in life when it 
 is difficult to believe that this is true. In the midst 
 of the affluence that success so often brings 
 there is little to make us remember that this pros¬ 
 perity may not improbably wane. There is an 
 inviolable law of nature that stipulates that there 
 shall be no flood tide that is not followed by an 
 ebb. Nature has her time of harvest and there is a 
 time when nothing can be gathered. There is a 
 day of sunshine and a day of rain. 
 
 Every student of financial history knows that 
 the same phenomena occur in the life of nations, 
 and, with our own experiences, of too recent date 
 to be easily forgotten, we should realize how little 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 115 
 
 < 
 
 a thing it takes to turn the financial tide. During 
 the last panic—those dark, dreary days of depres¬ 
 sion when great institutions took refuge in bank¬ 
 ruptcy, and men of millions were impoverished— 
 we should have learned the lesson that preparation 
 for the winter of adversity is one of the first duties 
 of man. 
 
 So far as the rainy days are concerned, they 
 come to individuals just as they come to nations, 
 and usually, in both cases, they are the result of 
 very slight causes. A slip on the ice—a draught 
 of cold air—a tiny germ taken into the system at 
 the wrong moment—or any one of a hundred mis¬ 
 haps may prove sufficient to put the quietus upon 
 the earning capacity of the most stalwart in¬ 
 dividual. 
 
 It is not only because of the almost inevitable 
 appearance of rainy days that economy is one of 
 the most important factors in the attainment of 
 success, for, while a bank balance is advantageous 
 in helping to keep the wolf from the door, it is 
 
 \ 
 
116 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 just as useful in enabling us to meet and take ad¬ 
 vantage of the opportunities that may prove to be 
 the open door to greater attainments. The litera¬ 
 ture of biography is filled with the stories of men 
 who have started with a shoe-string and have 
 afterward achieved success, but, if you were to 
 read these narratives closely, you would see that 
 the “ success ” did not come until after they had 
 passed through a period of carefully fostered 
 economy. It may be possible to accomplish great 
 results in the commercial world with a very small 
 amount of money, yet every day men fail in busi¬ 
 ness, or lose great opportunities, simply for lack 
 of the small capital that they might have had if 
 they had but exercised even ordinary foresight in 
 guarding against wastefulness. 
 
 While most men will admit the value of 
 economy, not all by any means understand the 
 full significance of the term. To the majority the 
 word is merely a synonym for the savings we make 
 in our domestic and business affairs—the pennies 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 117 
 
 that we lay by with the hope that they may live 
 up to the promise of the ancient maxim and subse¬ 
 quently develop into dollars. 
 
 Of course, this is an important phase of 
 economy, but it is only one of its phases. To 
 apply the term properly, it must exert a more inti¬ 
 mate effect upon our lives—it must play a more 
 vital part in our affairs. If all the savings we 
 make are represented by pennies, or even by dol¬ 
 lars, our part has been only half played. It is 
 wise to practice financial economies, but it is not 
 wise to stop there. Besides saving our money 
 there are many possessions in which we should 
 economize—our health, our physical strength, 
 and, among other things, our mental and nervous 
 energy. 
 
 Many individuals who pride themselves upon 
 their ability to be economical are actually spend¬ 
 thrifts when it comes to the matter of mental and 
 physical strength. They regard their ability to 
 work hard and persistently as a virtue, and they 
 
118 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 continue to work as though such accomplishments 
 represented the most noble achievement to which 
 it were possible for man to attain. They do not re¬ 
 alize that even a virtue may be carried to excess— 
 that economy may develop into miserliness, and 
 that industry assumes the odor of criminality when 
 it is forced to such extremes that the health is im¬ 
 paired. 
 
 Industry is commendable, but there is such a 
 thing as working too hard, and the most in¬ 
 dustrious men too frequently become spendthrifts 
 of energy. They do not ask the question: “Can 
 I afford to do this? Can I afford to take this 
 task home and extend my working hours far into 
 the night? Can I afford to forego the pleasure 
 and relaxation that a visit to the theatre would 
 give me? Can I afford to relinquish my chance 
 for a vacation? Can I afford to do two men’s 
 work, even at an increase in salary? ’’ 
 
 We are very apt to debate these questions ex¬ 
 clusively from the financial point of view, when. 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 119 
 
 as a matter of fact, the monetary argument 
 should not always have the greatest weight. 
 There is no profit in doing two men’s work, even 
 at two men’s pay, if all the money earned is to be 
 expended in paying for the services of doctors 
 and nurses. There is no profit in working day 
 and night to save clerk hire, only to end your 
 days as a chronic invalid, or in a sanitarium. 
 Death is a big price to pay for the privilege of 
 working overtime. 
 
 It may reduce your profits considerably to em¬ 
 ploy the one or two additional helpers that you 
 need, but have you ever stopped to consider how 
 much more time you would have for the develop¬ 
 ment of your business if you were relieved of the 
 mass of details that are now making you a nervous 
 wreck? It may cost you a good many dollars, 
 that vacation trip that you have planned, but— 
 never fear!—the dollars will be well spent. You 
 will return fit for work—in good condition to re¬ 
 cover far more than the amount you can possibly 
 
120 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 spend. If, instead of taking this trip, you try to 
 spend the vacation in your own home, the result 
 will not be the same. It isn’t merely the fact that 
 a man is absent from his desk that counts. It is 
 the change of scene, the different atmosphere, the 
 opportunity to see new faces, the ability to enlarge 
 his view of things. 
 
 Undoubtedly recreations, like every other 
 virtue, can be overdone, but that is not the sort 
 of recreation about which we are talking. The 
 main point to be remembered is that all work and 
 no play will be certain to make us dull, and that, 
 as success is largely dependent upon quickness of 
 thought and facility of comprehension, lack of 
 recreation is not unlikely to pave the way for 
 failure, even if, as frequently happens, it does not 
 make us ill, or dig a grave for us. 
 
 Waste of energy is quite as serious a handicap 
 in the struggle for success as waste of money, and 
 if there were but some way by which we might 
 ascertain the amount of energy that is wasted by 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 121 
 
 each one of us every day of our lives we would 
 unquestionably find the true explanation for our 
 failures. Indeed, if it were a problem that could 
 be set down numerically, we should probably find 
 that the energy expended unnecessarily would be 
 quite equal to the amount required to accomplish 
 every task that we are ordinarily called upon to 
 perform. In other words, in doing the things that 
 we have to do we use up fully twice the amount 
 of vital force that we are actually required to ex¬ 
 pend. 
 
 There are many men who do not know what it 
 is to feel free from the cares of business. Instead 
 of leaving their commercial problems at the office, 
 they take them home, where they allow them to 
 spoil their appetite for dinner and rob sleep of its 
 joys, either through forced wakefulness or dreams 
 in which the business troubles of the day work 
 themselves into a still more intricate tangle. As 
 the result, they rise in the morning still weary with 
 the cares that should have been forgotten many 
 hours before. 
 
122 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 All this is a woeful waste of energy, for in the 
 time that we spend thinking about these tasks, and, 
 perhaps, dreading to undertake them, we waste 
 fully as much of this vital force as would be re¬ 
 quired for the actual performance of the duty. 
 To use a homely illustration, the man who lies in 
 bed in the morning dreading to get up, gets up, 
 not once but several times. In thinking about ris¬ 
 ing, and in dreading to make the effort, he dissi¬ 
 pates more force than would enable him to take 
 the step he so dislikes to contemplate. 
 
 The man who chases the street car, and who, 
 perhaps, stands on the corner and says unkind things 
 about the company because he has failed to catch 
 it, wastes infinitely more energy than he would re¬ 
 quire to walk to the proper place at his ordinary 
 gait and quietly wait for the next car. The very 
 act of losing the temper is one of the most wasteful 
 expenditures of energy that it is possible to con¬ 
 ceive. In fact, to conserve the energy which is 
 so necessary to the successful accomplishment of 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 123 
 
 any task, or the attainment of any purpose, the 
 mind must be kept in as calm a state as possible. 
 The man who rushes about as if the safety of the 
 universe depended upon his individual effort—who 
 gets excited and flurried if everyone does not heed 
 his beck and call—does not begin to accomplish 
 the results that are attained by the individual who 
 calmly, quietly and intelligently works on to the 
 logical conclusion of his labors. The former may 
 gain the reputation of being more energetic than 
 the latter, but, when it comes to the question of 
 relative results—and, of course, it is results that 
 count in the commercial world—it will be found 
 that it is the steady, unostentatious workman who 
 has done the greatest things. 
 
 Another method by which many expend their 
 vital energy uselessly is by trying to do two or 
 three different things at once, or by thinking about 
 one thing when trying to perform another. It is 
 surprising how many persons are unable to do one 
 thing, and only that one thing at a time. By force 
 
124 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 of habit we have accustomed ourselves to think 
 about one subject when attending to another— 
 working at one problem while planning how we 
 shall undertake the next—just as we read a book 
 or newspaper while our mind is wandering in an 
 entirely different direction. When reading in this 
 manner, we see the words but they convey little 
 meaning to our inattentive mind. 
 
 This does not imply that we should never spend 
 time making preparations for the work that must 
 be done in the future. If thought is properly con¬ 
 centrated upon these subjects, the effect is the 
 same as that of actual work. It is the wandering 
 mind, and the mind that anticipates troubles un¬ 
 necessarily, which wastes the forces that we can 
 so ill afford to lose. 
 
 All worry is this kind of wasted effort, taking 
 our mental strength from more useful things and 
 devoting it to something from which we cannot 
 possibly derive the slightest benefit. What would 
 you think of a man who continued to work, day 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 125 
 
 after day, when he knew that the effort he was 
 making would never and could never be re¬ 
 warded? Work, to meet its highest possibilities, 
 must have some sort of a pay envelope in sight. It 
 may not mean definite remuneration in so many 
 dollars and cents, but it must tend toward a re¬ 
 ward of some kind. It must bring advantages to 
 the individual who is doing the work, or to those 
 for whom the work is being done. We may work 
 for our own intellectual advancement without hope 
 of financial reward; we may work for the benefit 
 of humanity, but there must be a return somewhere 
 —otherwise the work is wasted effort. 
 
 Instead of doing ourselves any good by worry¬ 
 ing, such a mental condition invariably operates 
 against us. Instead of benefiting others, it tends 
 directly to incapacitate us for being of any service 
 to our fellow men. Instead of sharpening our wits 
 and suggesting safe avenues of escape from our di¬ 
 lemmas, it awakens the element of fear in our char¬ 
 acter and thoroughly unfits us to meet the every¬ 
 day problems of life. 
 
126 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 Nothing kills more surely than worry, and fret¬ 
 fulness is so closely allied to it that its effect is 
 practically the same. Fretfulness shatters the 
 nerves, dissipating the force upon which we must 
 place our dependence in the emergencies of life, so 
 causing us to expend the greater part of our most 
 valuable energies in bothering about things that 
 not only can’t be helped, but that, in reality, are 
 scarcely worth a serious thought. 
 
 Everything that ever has been done well has 
 been done calmly. Many things that have been 
 done badly owe their failure to the haste, or lack 
 of calmness, with which they have been per¬ 
 formed. 
 
 The peace of mind which helps us to win so 
 many battles is a habit that may be formed with¬ 
 out much difficulty by those who are willing to 
 cultivate the tendency to forget rather than to fret 
 about the trivial mishaps that are so often en¬ 
 countered in life. The trouble with many people 
 is that, while strong in meeting great emergencies. 
 
The Law of Economy 
 
 127 
 
 they lose control over themselves as soon as one or 
 two little things go wrong. It is as if a man should 
 climb a great mountain safely only to fall and 
 break his neck by stubbing his toe upon a carpet 
 tack. 
 
 These are some of the phases of economy— 
 the economy that those who would succeed must 
 practice—for it is only by conserving all our re¬ 
 sources that we can hope to rise above the limits 
 of mediocrity in any field of human endeavor. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Law of Temperance. 
 
 To those who have attained years of maturity 
 the maintenance of the physical equilibrium may 
 seem like a very commonplace thing, but, if we 
 stop to think about it, it is something of a mystery 
 to us—even now. It was by practice that we 
 learned to stand erect. It was by practice that we 
 learned to walk, just as it is by practice that we 
 have discovered the best way of performing many 
 other feats that are required of us. Yet, with all 
 this practice, what a little thing it takes to make us 
 lose our balance! A push, though ever so gentle, 
 may upset us—the smallest sort of an interruption 
 to our ordinary method of locomotion may bring 
 us to the ground—any persistent divergence from 
 the path of normal living may accomplish our 
 downfall. 
 
 129 
 
130 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 These facts not only show us the necessity of 
 maintaining the equilibrium but they furnish a text 
 from which an excellent sermon on temperance 
 might be preached, for the term “ temperance,’* 
 in its truest sense, means a perfect balance be¬ 
 tween all parts of the human machine—the closest 
 adjustment and most thorough co-operation be¬ 
 tween the faculties of the body and those of the 
 mind. 
 
 Undoubtedly there are plenty of persons who 
 never think of the word “ temperance ” in this 
 sense. To many it is a term that applies only to 
 the drinking of alcoholic liquors, and when they 
 refrain from the use of beer, or the stronger bever¬ 
 ages, they assume the right to call themselves 
 temperate people. In many instances nothing 
 could be further from the truth. 
 
 Temperance and intemperance are not quali¬ 
 ties that apply to one habit alone. To be truly 
 temperate it is necessary that no practice shall be 
 carried to excess. That too much tobacco is in- 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 131 
 
 jurious to the physical health is scarcely a de¬ 
 batable question, yet it is just as true that too 
 much of anything else will be quite as likely to 
 work an injury in one direction or another. To 
 maintain the condition of good health, one cannot 
 be intemperate in anything. It is the individual 
 who strikes pretty close to the average in every¬ 
 thing who is the healthy and successful as well as 
 the most temperate man. 
 
 Success is so difficult of attainment—competi¬ 
 tion in the race we are running is so great—that 
 no one can afford to put on the additional weight 
 that a bad habit necessitates. Looked at from 
 a purely selfish point of view, and without regard 
 to the ethical aspects of the question, no one has 
 so certain a prospect of “ walking away from the 
 field *' that he can take the chance of failure that 
 such a handicap requires. Undoubtedly, over-in¬ 
 dulgence in alcoholic stimulants is one of the worst 
 of these bad habits, for it is a well-established fact 
 that no man can attend properly to his business in- 
 
132 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 terests and at the same time drink much liquor. 
 Even the man who confines his drinking to those 
 hours of the day when he is popularly supposed to 
 be at leisure soon finds that the habit interferes 
 with his capacity as a producer, for business and 
 dissipation mix no better than oil and water. To 
 attain a success that will be to any marked degree 
 permanent it is necessary that there should be a 
 healthy mind as well as a strong body, and any¬ 
 thing that has a tendency to weaken the mental or 
 physical condition is a serious violation of the law 
 of temperance. 
 
 To train the mind properly, and to keep it in 
 good trim to perform all the duties that may de¬ 
 volve upon it, one must go to work very much as 
 the athlete does when called upon to train his 
 body for an important contest. 
 
 If you have ever watched the professional ath¬ 
 lete at work you must have noticed how careful 
 he is to maintain the evenness of his life, especially 
 during the training period. He knows that if he 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 133 
 
 drinks, smokes, or eats to excess his muscles will 
 refuse to do his bidding. He realizes that if he 
 deprives himself of the amount of sleep that his 
 body demands his nerves will no longer be subject 
 to his will. If he lies about all day, taking no 
 exercise, his muscles will grow soft and flabby. 
 Neither must he overtrain, lest he strain them. In¬ 
 stead of doing any one thing to excess, therefore, 
 he does all things in moderation, and his wonder¬ 
 ful exhibitions of strength and skill are the result 
 of this practical demonstration of the science of 
 living. 
 
 While we may not be athletes, and may have 
 no occasion to spend so much time in studying 
 the niceties of physical training, this phase of ath¬ 
 letic work emphasizes one lesson that it will be 
 profitable for all of us to remember. Thus, from 
 this example, we learn that to keep the body active 
 and supple and to maintain the proper ratio of 
 mental and physical strength, one must be temper¬ 
 ate in all things. To keep the mind alert—the 
 
134 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 mental man in a fit condition to grapple instantly 
 with any problem that may present itself—one 
 may do all things moderately, but one must do 
 nothing to excess. The only way in which we 
 can hope to be able to take advantage of the op¬ 
 portunities that are constantly occurring, and 
 which mean so much in life, is to be ready to 
 meet each emergency. The only course of train¬ 
 ing that will put a man in this condition is a sane 
 and even mode of living. 
 
 Of course it is sometimes difficult to draw the 
 line between excess and moderation, or to say 
 where an act ceases to be a virtue and becomes a 
 vice. This is particularly true in the case of the 
 privations to which we subject ourselves in our 
 struggle for success, for while in one respect they 
 may appear ennobling, from another viewpoint 
 they may actually assume the aspect of criminality. 
 
 We read the story of Abraham Lincoln’s boy¬ 
 hood, and we picture him—a lanky youth in 
 rough homespun—stretched out upon the floor 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 135 
 
 before the fire, straining his eyes that he may see 
 to read by the fitful light from the backlog and 
 the embers, for it was thus that he secured his 
 education while others slept. We read, too, in 
 the lives of many great men, that the success for 
 which we admire them was due to the fact that 
 they willingly deprived themselves of comforts— 
 even of necessities—in the days before the world 
 became acquainted with them. All this seems very 
 commendable when we view it in the light of their 
 later achievements, and we are not unlikely to 
 forget that there may be another side to the 
 picture. 
 
 Take, as an example, the case of Henry Har- 
 land, whose life was snuffed out a few years 
 ago in payment of a debt which he owed out¬ 
 raged nature. When a young man, and strug¬ 
 gling for recognition, he worked all day at a desk 
 in one of the municipal offices, depriving himself 
 of all but four hours’ sleep that he might spend the 
 night perfecting the almost inimitable studies of 
 
136 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 Ghetto life that he printed under the pseudonym 
 of “ Sidney Luska.” 
 
 To some degree Henry Harland won the fame 
 that he desired. At least, he succeeded in writ¬ 
 ing several novels that numbered among the 
 “ best sellers ” and so made his name known 
 wherever English fiction is read. Before he 
 fairly had time to enjoy this success, however, and 
 while he was still scarcely more than a youth, 
 death came suddenly. The physicians agreed 
 that it was due solely to the fact that he had 
 undermined his constitution by loss of sleep. 
 
 In the ordinary sense of the word, Henry Har¬ 
 land was a temperate man. He neither drank nor 
 smoked to excess, yet his intemperance, while pur¬ 
 sued in a different direction, weakened his body to 
 the point of dissolution. He paid for his success 
 with his life and it is an exorbitant price to pay— 
 even for success! If he had slept a little longer he 
 would have lived longer. He might have been a 
 little older when fame finally smiled upon him; 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 137 
 
 the big checks from the publishers might have 
 been delayed for a year or two, but the man would 
 have lived to enjoy them. The brain, unwearied, 
 would have produced still greater works, and the 
 success which came at last might have been that 
 undying fame that is so different from the little 
 brief applause for which so many men and women 
 seem willing to lay down their lives. 
 
 Next to excessive indulgence in strong drink 
 there is no form of intemperance that is likely to 
 prove so injurious as the habit of curtailing the 
 hours of sleep. It is true that the still hours of the 
 night, when the telephone is silent and there is no 
 danger of interruption from any source, are more 
 conducive to fruitful labors than those of the day, 
 but even this circumstance will not atone for the 
 fact that the working period is extended to such a 
 degree as to shorten the recuperative period be¬ 
 yond the sane limit. 
 
 As to just what that limit is, even scientists are 
 not agreed, but it is pretty generally admitted that 
 
138 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 those who sleep eight hours in each twenty- 
 four live longer and maintain their health more 
 evenly than those who sleep six hours. Seven 
 hours may do, if the emergency is pressing, but 
 six hours is too short a period for sleep, and those 
 who restrict themselves to that amount of time in 
 bed, or less, are accumulating mental and physical 
 conditions that are certain to result in serious dis¬ 
 aster before many years have passed. 
 
 We usually think of food as the thing that is 
 most necessary for the proper continuance of life, 
 when it is really one of the minor considerations. 
 Thus, we could go without food for a much longer 
 time than without sleep. Cases are known of men 
 who have fasted from forty to sixty days, but they 
 could not have gone without sleep for one-tenth 
 part of that period. 
 
 The individual who begrudges the time that he 
 spends in rest and recreation is as guilty of the 
 crime of suicide as the man who deliberately takes 
 his own life. In fact he attains the same end— 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 139 
 
 more slowly, perhaps, but with just as much cer¬ 
 tainty—and his success in accumulating money or 
 winning distinction does not absolve him for the 
 offense that he has committed against the laws of 
 Nature. 
 
 The matter of exercise is another phase of in¬ 
 temperance into which the busy man is not unlikely 
 to drift. Working in the shop or office, and com¬ 
 pelled to spend the greater part of the day indoors, 
 he continues to live, year in and year out, with 
 about one-half the amount of fresh air that his 
 lungs actually demand. Indeed, he becomes so 
 accustomed to this sort of living that he does not 
 realize that he is depriving himself of one of the 
 factors which not only tend toward better health 
 and longer life but which also, in creating greater 
 energy, materially increase his chances of success. 
 
 It is not so much because the muscles need exer¬ 
 cising that the physicians advise outdoor recrea¬ 
 tions. There are many ways in which the muscular 
 exercise might be obtained with a few minutes’ 
 
140 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 work in the house, but this does not answer the 
 purpose at all. It is for the reason that they afford 
 greater opportunities for fresh air that walking and 
 golf are advocated. The physician knows that 
 the human lungs need much fresh air and he en¬ 
 deavors to make his patients walk around enough 
 to meet this bodily requirement. We deem a man 
 most foolish when he sacrifices his opportunities to 
 succeed for the questionable pleasures that he de¬ 
 rives from the drink or drug habit, but it is an open 
 question if the man who gives way to such a weak¬ 
 ness is more to be blamed than he who limits his 
 capacity for attainment simply because he will not 
 take from business duties the time required for the 
 proper observance of the imperative laws of health. 
 
 There is still another statute that must be re¬ 
 membered in this connection, and this is the law 
 which stipulates that every human being must have 
 a certain amount of agreeable recreation in order 
 to maintain the equilibrium between mind and 
 body. It may be true that the matter of recreation 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 141 
 
 does not always assume the same aspect of vital 
 importance that such factors as food, drink, sleep 
 and fresh air represent, yet it is not easy to say to 
 what degree the pleasures of life may safely be 
 neglected by those who aspire to achieve life’s 
 highest possibilities. There can be no question but 
 that the mind which devotes itself exclusively to one 
 line of effort soon becomes a thoroughly one-sided 
 mind, a mind thinking along such narrow chan¬ 
 nels that it can conceive of nothing—can see and 
 grasp no opportunities—outside of its own re¬ 
 stricted environment. All philosophers in study¬ 
 ing the human mind, have appreciated the value 
 of the place that play maintains in the great scheme 
 of life. The venerable Walt Whitman, in one of 
 his latest utterances, summing up the wide experi¬ 
 ences of a lifetime, said: “ It is a study—a pro¬ 
 found study—the play in life as much as the work 
 
 in life—and it is all right, too. 
 
 Sometimes you don’t pay too much for play if you 
 pay your last cent for it.” 
 
142 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 To find a comprehensive definition for the word 
 “ temperance,” it must also be made to apply to 
 our thoughts and emotions—to the operations that 
 may be entirely mental as well as to those that 
 .more generally affect the physical health—for it is 
 only through obedience to the laws of temperance 
 that man can establish his reign over the kingdom 
 of self. The gift of individuality is, perhaps, the 
 greatest blessing of mankind, but to retain the sov¬ 
 ereignty that has been bestowed upon him he must 
 retain his control over his kingdom in thought and 
 word as well as in deed. By giving way to the 
 passions he steps down from the throne and per¬ 
 mits his emotions to take his place. From a king 
 he descends to the rank of the slave—a slave to the 
 passions that he himself has fostered. 
 
 Our study of the brain has taught us that habits 
 grow by repetition—that those which might easily 
 be checked, were they taken in time, may become 
 so firmly fixed as to be almost unerasable if per¬ 
 mitted to continue unsuppressed. Of these the 
 
The Law of Temperance 
 
 143 
 
 loss of self-control, as witnessed in exhibitions of 
 temper, is liable to exercise the most vital effect 
 upon the affairs of the business life, and more than 
 one failure to succeed might be traced to the fact 
 that passion was permitted to take the place that 
 reason should have occupied. 
 
 In brief, true temperance is but a synonym for 
 perfect self-control, and while the control of self 
 alone may not be the great secret of success, it 
 makes the way to the attainment of our highest 
 ideals so smooth that there is nothing to check our 
 progress. “ When God created man in His own 
 image,” as Jordan has said, “ His first gift to him 
 was dominion, and the greatest dominion is over— 
 self.” 
 
r 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Law of Compensation. 
 
 “ If at first you don’t succeed ”- 
 
 You know the rest, for we used to write the 
 words over and over again in the copy-books at 
 school. 
 
 “ If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” 
 
 I fear that many of us wrote the phrase much 
 as a parrot talks. We may have exercised great 
 care in shaping the letters. We may never have 
 forgotten to dot the ” i’s ” and cross the “ t’s,” 
 but, when the lesson was ended, we couldn’t have 
 comprehended what the words actually meant. 
 Otherwise we should not become so discouraged 
 when our efforts seem to meet with failure. 
 
 Among all the maxims that were taught at 
 school, not one embodied a more vital truth than 
 this short sentence. Success is a matter of law, not 
 of chance, and were it possible for us to know just 
 
 145 
 
146 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 how to apply the laws properly at the right time, 
 the possibility of failure might be practically elim¬ 
 inated. " Unfortunately, our mastery over life is 
 not so complete that we can always anticipate and 
 frustrate the conditions that sometimes combine to 
 wreck our best laid plans. Even those who have 
 studied the art of merging psychology with busi¬ 
 ness occasionally fail deplorably, but usually the 
 fault is one that they can detect, though too late, 
 perhaps, to make the avoidance of disaster pos¬ 
 sible. 
 
 It is only the very young, or the very inexperi¬ 
 enced individual who can truthfully assert that he 
 has always “ made good.” Take the big men in 
 the business world—you will find in their lives no 
 record of unbroken successes. It may be true that 
 they deserve to be rated as “ successful ” men be¬ 
 cause they have succeeded in performing what we 
 term great deeds. Could we look into their inner 
 lives, however, we should soon see that the things 
 they touched did not always turn into gold. We 
 
The Law of Compensation 
 
 147 
 
 know them because of their successful achieve¬ 
 ments. We know nothing about the projects that 
 they have undertaken and finally abandoned, at 
 the cost of much time and money. Such men don’t 
 employ press agents to publish their failures that 
 the world may read of them. 
 
 The fact that a man may have failed—not once 
 only, but several times—does not necessarily mean 
 that his case is hopeless. It is not the failure itself 
 that damns—it is the effect that the failure exerts 
 upon us. History is filled with incidents of men 
 who have made the sorriest sorts of failures, but 
 who have redeemed themselves afterwards because 
 they have followed the simple method laid down 
 by the copy-book maxim. Indeed, it is the only 
 way by which failure may be turned into success. 
 If at first you don’t succeed—no matter what kind 
 of a job it is you hold, or what sort of an enter¬ 
 prise you have undertaken—try again, and keep 
 on trying. Such efforts are always rewarded. 
 
148 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 There is a law of compensation in life—a law 
 that stipulates that you are to get what you de¬ 
 serve, no matter on which side of the ledger the 
 balance stands. For every right action you are 
 blessed; for every wrong action you are penalized. 
 The reward may seem slow in coming, but—never 
 fear!—it will come, and, when it comes, the re¬ 
 ward or the punishment will be just as real as the 
 original act was real. The Biblical promise that 
 “ to him that hath shall be given, and whosoever 
 hath not, from him shall be taken even that which 
 he seemeth to have,” holds true today, and the 
 sooner we recognize the nature of the principles 
 that govern success the more readily attainable it 
 will become. 
 
 As I have already said, there are those who 
 have taken occasion to complain at what they term 
 the “ unjust discrimination ” indicated in this pass¬ 
 age, but this is because they do not understand it. 
 If it meant that it is the Divine purpose that the 
 rich man shall ever grow richer, while the poor 
 
The Law of Compensation 
 
 149 
 
 man is to have no chance to become anything but 
 poorer, however strenuously he may struggle to 
 better his condition, it might be possible to ques¬ 
 tion the fairness of such an arrangement. For¬ 
 tunately, however, as we have learned by experi¬ 
 ence, personal effort is never utterly useless, nor 
 does this statement assert that it can be. To the 
 contrary, it propounds a demonstrable scientific 
 principle that is so important as to be well worth 
 further consideration. 
 
 There can be no doubt that there exists an at¬ 
 traction between affinities, or, as we now sometimes 
 say, that “ like attracts like,” and this fact, which 
 is true of material objects, becomes just as true 
 when applied to human beings and their actions. 
 It is the man who is able to assert his authority that 
 obtains the opportunities to command. It is the 
 man entirely capable of directing the efforts of 
 others who holds the executive places most success¬ 
 fully. If a man has a little ability in these direc¬ 
 tions, his power is necessarily restricted, but the 
 
150 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 longer he exercises such abilities wisely the greater 
 become his opportunities to use them. It is the 
 same with the person who has money. The pos¬ 
 session of a little money enables a man to command 
 more, by opening up the way to opportunities of 
 which he could have taken no advantage had it not 
 been for the cash in his possession. So, too, in the 
 case of the man who is skilled in one of the trades, 
 the arts, or the professions. His knowledge gives 
 him the power to seize opportunities that would be 
 beyond the reach of those more ignorant than he. 
 
 In a word, the passage teaches the important 
 truth that the only way by which any man can be¬ 
 come a power in the world is to be capable of 
 having and holding the things to which he aspires. 
 It means that the money, the authority, or the 
 ability that we desire to possess will be given to us 
 in accordance with our capacity to use it, and that 
 if we prove incapable of “ making good ” in small 
 opportunities, the little chances that are given us 
 
The Law of Compensation 
 
 151 
 
 in order to test our strength will themselves be 
 taken away. 
 
 And, isn’t this exactly what occurs in everyday 
 life? How easy it is to recall instances in which 
 men who appeared to have good opportunities 
 have been deprived of their authority because they 
 were incapable of exercising it. They have had 
 their positions of trust taken from them because 
 they lacked the intelligence, the character or the 
 skill to command, and the same is true in every 
 field of activity. Each person is permitted to 
 climb as long as he exhibits the necessary strength. 
 As he ascends, new and greater opportunities are 
 given to him, and it is only when he fails to take 
 advantage of them that his chances cease. In 
 plain English, the passage might be rendered “ to 
 him that hath the capacity to ‘ make good ’ shall 
 be given the opportunity to succeed, and whoso¬ 
 ever hath no capacity, from him shall be taken 
 even the opportunities which he seemeth to have.” 
 
152 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 Another law that is so intimately interwoven 
 with the law of compensation that it is practically 
 but another phase of the same statute is what may 
 be termed “ the Law of Reciprocity.” 
 
 In every plane of creation, from the lowest type 
 of plant life to the highest type of animal life, 
 everything is created for a purpose, and that pur¬ 
 pose is as much one of giving as it is of receiving. 
 The plant that absorbs its nutriment from the earth 
 and air gives it forth again in the form of oxygen. 
 If it fails to do this—if it should endeavor to re¬ 
 tain what it had absorbed, failing to give as well as 
 get—it would pay the penalty of violating this 
 law of natural reciprocity with its life. It is a 
 physical impossibility for a plant to be selfish and 
 healthy at the same time. 
 
 Selfishness is as destructive to man—though to 
 a different degree—as it is to the plant. To be 
 healthfully successful, we must also give as well as 
 get. If we were to devote all our energies to the 
 work of accumulation and no effort to the work of 
 
153 
 
 The Law of Compensation 
 
 distribution, we should soon find ourselves utterly 
 out of harmony with life. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, a great reservoir, a thou¬ 
 sand times as big in all its dimensions as the largest 
 reservoir you have ever seen, or of which you have 
 ever read. As originally constructed, this reser¬ 
 voir was undoubtedly provided with outlets as 
 well as inlets—pipes through which the water 
 could be carried out of the reservoir almost as 
 easily as it could run in. 
 
 But suppose you were to stop up the outlets! 
 What would happen? Almost before you knew 
 it the reservoir would overflow. It would prob¬ 
 ably destroy itself and inundate the surrounding 
 country. 
 
 Within each of us there is a reservoir in which 
 we store our energies that we may use them as we 
 require them. Let this reservoir work naturally 
 and healthfully and our resources are turned into 
 the proper channels where they operate—first for 
 the general good, and afterwards, in accordance 
 
154 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 with nature’s beneficient provision for reaction, for 
 our own benefit and growth. To be successful, 
 this law of reciprocity must be observed. It is just 
 as impossible for a man to keep on taking in with¬ 
 out giving out as it is for the plant to absorb with¬ 
 out exhaling. 
 
 It is here that many individuals make their grav¬ 
 est mistake, and so turn what might have been a 
 great success into ignominious failure. Because 
 things seem to have started their way they en¬ 
 deavor—perhaps thoughtlessly, perhaps with de¬ 
 liberate selfishness—to corner the product of their 
 industry, keeping everything and giving nothing in 
 return. Having the first pleasant taste of pros¬ 
 perity still fresh in their memory they dread to let 
 any of it escape them. 
 
 The ancient wise men who prepared the “ Kab¬ 
 balah,” that wonderful book of mysteries that has 
 had so marked an influence in shaping the history 
 of the Jewish race, recognized this, and did not 
 fail to emphasize the truth that prosperity is a con- 
 
155 
 
 The Law of Compensation 
 
 dition that is much harder to bear than adversity. 
 When success is no more than a promise, we de¬ 
 vote our best efforts to its attainment. When our 
 greatest ambitions remain unsatisfied we do our 
 best work. Beneath the spur of necessity our most 
 heroic deeds are accomplished. When the pre¬ 
 liminary heights are scaled, and the first rewards 
 of victory have been tasted, the mettle of the soul 
 is tested. 
 
 There is a danger in the dawn of prosperity that 
 adversity never presents. There is the temptation 
 to stop pulling—the temptation to rest on the oars, 
 and make the most of the few advantages that 
 have been gained. Then there is also the tempta¬ 
 tion to become too avaricious—to want all that we 
 can obtain and to begrudge giving the little that the 
 law of reciprocity demands of us. As success is a 
 matter of adjustment, failure will soon follow if 
 these sins against the law are not quickly pruned 
 
 away. 
 
156 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 It is no uncommon thing to hear persons assert 
 that the opportunities for success today are not so 
 great as they were some twenty-five or thirty years 
 ago. Undoubtedly more people are doing things 
 today than there were in the days when our fathers 
 were young, but there are more persons to make 
 use of the products of their industry, and the num¬ 
 bers are constantly increasing. Moreover, there is 
 no field of endeavor in which great advancements 
 
 have not been made during the last quarter of a 
 century. As the result, new fields have been 
 opened to cultivation, and new standards of effici¬ 
 ency have been established. 
 
 At the same time, a comparison of the oppor¬ 
 tunities of the present day with those of the last 
 two or three decades shows that they are of an en¬ 
 tirely different character. During the past few 
 years the demands of the new business conditions 
 have compelled men to become more efficient and 
 the efforts at specializing that have resulted, have, 
 more than any one factor, tended to make success 
 the just reward for ability. 
 
The Law of Compensation 
 
 157 
 
 Study the work of any successful man and you 
 will find him a specialist in his particular line. He 
 may not have as wide an experience of general 
 knowledge as the man whom he succeeded, but 
 when it comes to the work that he is called upon to 
 perform, he can do it better than it ever has been 
 done before. 
 
 The simple fact is that we have reached the ob¬ 
 vious conclusion that life is too short to enable any¬ 
 body to cover the entire field of human knowledge, 
 so we have opened the industries to the special¬ 
 izes, in this way developing a class of experts that 
 is superior to any workman that the world has 
 previously known. 
 
 To be a conspicuously successful man in this 
 age it is necessary to be something more than cap¬ 
 able and industrious. Of course, if a man wants 
 to limit his capacity to these qualities—if he knows 
 his work reasonably well and is not afraid of hard 
 work—he still stands a fair prospect of obtaining 
 and keeping a moderately good position, but he 
 
158 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 can never climb much higher until he has entered 
 the rank of the specialists. 
 
 It is for this reason that it sometimes seems as if 
 there might be a lack of opportunities, when it is 
 merely a case in which the character of the oppor¬ 
 tunity has changed. There are still plenty of big 
 jobs waiting for the right man to appear and claim 
 them—more, in fact, than there have been at any 
 time since the dawn of civilization—but those who 
 presume to accept these places in the business 
 world must be men of real ability and originality, 
 men who have so concentrated both thought and 
 effort upon one particular line of work that they 
 may justly be termed “ specialists.” 
 
 So far from finding a cause for discouragement 
 in the present-day conditions, therefore, there is no 
 reason why our ambitions should reach beyond the 
 bounds of the attainable, provided we are willing 
 to obey the laws that make for success. There 
 never was a time when success could be plucked 
 
The Law of Compensation 
 
 159 
 
 like an apple from a tree, for things that are worth 
 having have always cost their possessor an effort, 
 and always will. 
 
 It is one thing to dream about the things we 
 want to do. It is another thing to do them. Day¬ 
 dreams do not amount to very much until they 
 have outgrown the dream stage. Like aspirations, 
 they simply point the way to achievements that 
 are within the realm of possibility. To realize the 
 possibility, we must stop dreaming and go to work. 
 
 Nothing that we aspire to accomplish is an im¬ 
 possibility unless we make it so. We have been 
 given the tools with which to work, but it has been 
 left to us to sharpen them. If through our own 
 negligence we let them remain dull as they were 
 before ambition suggested the great ideas now 
 surging through our brain, it is our own fault if 
 the plans we have formulated never become any¬ 
 thing more tangible than mental pictures. If we 
 possess the power to realize our ambitions, we are 
 doubly to blame if our projects come to nothing. 
 
160 
 
 The Ten Laws of Success 
 
 If we lack this power, we still have the means of 
 cultivating it within our reach. Success is a 
 straight problem in sowing and reaping. Luck 
 plays no part in it. Everything depends upon how 
 you work! 
 
 
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 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
 Books may be kept for two weeks and may be 
 renewed for the same period, unless reserved. 
 
 Two cents a day is charged for each book kept 
 overtime. 
 
 If you cannot find what you want, ask the 
 Librarian who will be glad to help you. 
 
 The borrower is responsible for books drawn 
 on his card and for all fines accruing on the same. 
 
 
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