In Business Life.
Stop short of attempting a business enterprise wholly beyond your mental and financial equipment. To attempt the rôle of a railroad magnate, for instance, when you have the soul of a licensed fish-vender, or the manipulation of a government loan with hardly enough capital for a fruit-stand, would be more ambitious than wise.
Stop before adopting rigorous and unbending methods that, under a change of fortune, can be quoted against you to your disadvantage. Thus, to never lend money, on principle, when prosperous, but be perfectly willing to borrow it when broke, might subject you to unpleasant comment.
Stop before assuming a domineering, Jovian tone toward those with less money than you, even if you have a corner on the market. Men are often like rats in this, that they fight when they are cornered.
Stop when already so deep into a hopeless speculation that you can’t beg or borrow another cent, when certain ruin stares you in the face, and even your pawn-tickets are at a discount. Forlorn hopes are only practicable in serial stories and war.
Stop, even at the height of prosperity, and make sure of the future by settling upon your family a competence that shall thenceforth forever be secured to them, come what may. This prudent course, feasible and honorable during prosperity, would be just the reverse if deferred until after business disaster may have come.
Stop short of imagining that there is any more luck in a legitimate business than in games of chance—in other words, that there is any at all. Or, if there is any, it consists of superior energy, foresight, shrewdness and application, wherein, of course, the stronger wins while the weaker goes to the wall.
Stop, and reflect well, before venturing outside of a legitimate, fairly-paying business upon the sea of speculation, which is in reality but gambling under another name.
Stop before cultivating a reputation for either over-credulity or relentless hard bargaining in business life. The one will be abused, while the other will foster enmities through the abuse it practices.
Stop short of uncompromising martinetism toward your employees. Our clerks, for instance, can no longer be treated as apprentices; many of them are rich men in embryo; and with what satisfaction and gratitude do powerful millionaires often recall slight kindnesses and encouragements received from their employers when they were nothing but obscure clerks or office-boys!
Stop before choosing business quarters of a magnitude and pretension wholly out of keeping with your trade and custom. There is a laughable case in point, in the upper part of New York, where a diminutive, tumble-down junk-shop displays a flaring sign with the preposterous legend: “Great American Mammoth Junk Emporium.”
Stop before advertising your commodities for something better than they really are. This is to cheat yourself in the long run, for the average of public buyers rarely allow themselves to be deliberately swindled twice by the same liar.
Stop short of supposing that the hackneyed phrase, “Business is business,” can ever excuse a downright dishonest transaction in the opinion of all your business acquaintances.
Stop, therefore, before setting the majority of them down as secretly unprincipled, and vaunting their uprightness as a mask. Money-loving as they are, the majority of those whose good opinion is worth having are personally honest at the core.
Stop short of being dazzled by mere business success, irrespective of questionable or dangerous methods by which it may have been achieved. Unless the means shall have justified the result, there can be no praiseworthy success.
Stop short of supposing that spasmodic cleverness can ever take the place of solid method, organized effort and settled application in any respectable calling.
Stop, and go easy before provoking a powerful business hostility, if possible, but never to the sacrifice of a true principle; and, war being fully declared (i.e., competition, ruthless and uncompromising), let it be to the knife, to the bitter end, till the last pecuniary sinew snaps!
