What Shall I Do? 341 



Take an account of stock also as regards the conditions exist- 

 ing in your own town or near-by markets. If a man in Red 

 Hook were to go in the violet business to supply the Rhinebeck 

 market, you would justly say he was lacking in good judgment. 

 But when many of us have to send out of town to get a first-class 

 quality of butter simply because the supply is not equal to the 

 demand, you would immediately say there is an opening here 

 for somebody. It is the people who take advantage of existing 

 conditions like that New Jersey girl, who made other people's 

 gardens, who are the successful ones. 



Business has been defined as the systematic effort to supply 

 wants, or to create those wants if they do not already exist. It 

 is George Eliot who says, somewhere, that the man who never 

 had a cushion doesn't miss it; so, whenever you persuade a person 

 that they need something to which they are not accustomed, you 

 have helped to solve the problem. It was the desire of a woman 

 to have a Leghorn hat that started all the great straw-hat in- 

 dustry in Rhode Island, and our great express companies started 

 from just such simple beginnings. 



When Samson was sent against the Philistines, the only weapon 

 in his hands was the jawbone of an ass, yet with it he slew a 

 thousand of the foe, and again, in answering this question, I 

 would ask, what is in thine hand, or, in other words, what busi- 

 ness is to-day furnishing the family support? 



The majority of us may not be able to branch out in any new 

 line of work, but there is one thing that every one of us can do. 

 We can become so familiar with the business of husband or father 

 that, in case of sickness or death, we can step in and take up the 

 work where they have laid it down. 



This may be a startling suggestion to many of you, but is there 

 any reason why, if a man's health fail and 'he be forced to receive 

 from the hands of others what he would willingly give himself, 

 a lucrative business should be sacrificed and turned over to other 

 hands when, by a careful training in business methods, it might 

 be retained in his own family. 



The American man is, as a rule, full of chivalry and devotion 

 to his family, and often they are kept in absolute ignorance of 

 his business affairs through his desire to spare them all unneces- 

 sary worry. Though this be done with the best of motives, it 

 is a mistaken kindness. Nothing in this world is more pitiful 

 than to see a woman past her first prime who has had every re- 

 sponsibility and business care taken from her, suddenly called 



