But it is also true that large success is always built upon a clear understanding of basic principles.
The common fallacy that it is best for a man—especially a young man—to confine his thought and studies to his own specialty has in many instances proved ruinous. It is easily possible to specialize so much as to lose all sense of the importance of a broad, well-balanced business training.
We all know the lawyer who is wrapped up in his quibbles; the accountant who sees nothing in business but a maze of figures; the advertising man who is so fascinated by "cleverness" that he
forgets to try to sell goods; and the technical man who knows nothing about the commercial phases of his engineering problems.
Such men cannot take their places among the higher executives because they know little or nothing of business outside their own specialty, and they cannot know even that thoroughly while their general outlook remains so narrow.
Only half ready
Some years ago two young men of unusual promise graduated from a prominent School of Mines and went to work for a big copper company as full-fledged mining engineers. They were located at an isolated camp, remote from civilization, and were given every chance to make good the prediction made for them at the time of graduation.
These men soon proved that they knew a great deal about the mining of copper. Their advancement was rapid, and within a comparatively short time one of them was appointed General Manager and the other Chief Engineer. To all intents and purposes they were in complete charge of the company's interests in that locality.
It was not long before the problems put up to these two mining experts ceased to be confined to the technical end of the business. The
handling of a large number of men, the disposition of big sums of money, the necessity of using both men and money economically, the accounting and statistics of their operations, and a hundred other problems no less "practical" demanded the exercise of judgment on their part and a knowledge of business principles that neither their technical training nor their previous experience had supplied.