172 SELLINGLUMBER 



young men of today are putting themselves into other men's busi- 

 ness as capital, and they are rightly solicitous in advance that 

 the return shall justify the investment. They realize that they 

 owe it to themselves to know where they are going. They have 

 learned that a job must interest them as well as support them. 

 They have dropped their cringing, apologetic deportment, and are 

 going out to get what belongs to them. They are answering the 

 type of help wanted advertisement which seeks ability to con- 

 stantly face new situations without hesitation, in the self-reliant 

 spirit of development and growth. They are not money mad. 

 They are not falling head-long into the first thing that comes along, 

 simply because they need money. They are putting their souls 

 into futures. They are lending their employers capital. All around 

 them are the evidences of growth and they are not blind to them. 

 They have seen men grow rapidly over night from poverty to 

 affluence. They realize that there is not a dollar nor a distinc- 

 tion beyond their reach. They have been goaded by practical 

 preachers, like Kaufman, into firmly believing that "there isn't 

 a ten-minute lease on a ten-cent piecethat there isn't an unavail- 

 able inch of land on the continent that any man with five senses 

 in his purse can command anything that Opportunity has to offer 

 r th - that if you are so rich the biggest skyscraper in town is within 



Beyond the your reach." Because the department store at the corner is merely 

 R rcssi^ness~ un( ^ er ^ e tem po rarv control of its present owner. When his ag- 

 gressiveness fails he loses his store. All the titles in the trust com- 

 panies' vaults and the millions in bank storage belong to anybody 

 shrewder than the folk who put them there. The chairmanship 

 of the steel trust and the presidency of Yale University are con- 

 stantly open to all comers. Even the White House is never be- 

 spoken for more than four years at a time. There's a seat waiting 

 for you in Congress and a page in the encyclopedia. You may 

 grow just as great as you please. You may aim your ambition 

 wherever you wish. There's no such thing as a private target. 

 Success is always up on the block, always up at auction. What 

 do you offer? Desire! That's easy to offer. We all desire to 

 be more, and to have more; but desires and wishes are unsigned 

 checks, worthless- without backing. How much manhood do you 

 bid? How much aggressiveness? How much of what is different 

 from what the other fellow is bidding? Because there are a hun- 

 dred million other fellows bidding against you, straining, striving, 

 scheming, inventing, daring, avoiding dissipation, dispensing with 



