It was industry that helped to make Franklin a successful man of business. This industry was, he tells us, a source of credit. “Particularly I was told, that mention being made of the new printing-office at the Merchants’ Every-Night Club, the general opinion was that it must fail, there being already two printers in the place—Kermer and Bradford. But Dr. Baird gave a contrary opinion: ‘for the industry of that Franklin,’ he said, ‘is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind. I see him still at work when I go from the club, and he is at work again before the neighbours are out of bed. This struck the rest, and he soon after had offers from one of them to supply us with stationery; but as yet he did not choose to engage in shop business.’ I mention this,” adds Franklin, “more particularly, and the more emphatically, though it seems to be talking in my own praise, that those of my posterity who shall read it, may know the use of that virtue (industry) when they see its effects in my favour throughout this relation.”
Again, let us see how men lose money; for the art of keeping money is of greater importance to a man than that of making it. The great house of Overend and Gurney fell, and threw all London into a panic, because the house did not know how to keep money, but went into all sorts of ruinous speculations, which ultimately brought it to the ground. “In a little room in one of the by-streets of New York, up a narrow, dingy flight of stairs, may be seen a man,” says an American writer, “doing a little brokerage which his friends put into his hands. That man at one time inherited the name and fortune of a house which America delighted to honour. That house was founded by two lads who left their homes to seek their fortunes in a great city. They owned nothing but the clothes they wore, and a small bundle tied to a stick, and thrown over their shoulders. Their clothes were home-spun, were woven under the parental roof, and cut and made by motherly skill and sisterly affection. They carried with them the rich boon of a mother’s blessing and a mother’s prayers. They were honest, industrious, truthful, and temperate. They did anything they found to do that was honest. They began a little trade, which increased in their hands, and extended till it reached all portions of the civilised world. They identified themselves with every good work. Education, humanity, and religion blessed their munificence. The founders of the house died, leaving a colossal fortune, and a name without a stain. They left their business and their reputation to the man who occupies the little chamber that we have referred to. He abandoned the principles on which the fame and honour of the house had been built up. He stained the name that for fifty years had been untarnished. He fled from his home; he wandered about the country under an assumed name. Widows and orphans who had left trust-money in their hands, lost their all. In his fall he dragged down the innocent, and spread consternation on all sides. A few years passed, and after skulking about in various cities abroad, he ventured back. Men were too kind to harm him. Those whom he had befriended in the days of his prosperity, helped him to a little brokerage to earn his bread, and so he lingered on, and died, poor and forgotten, and obscure;—a warning to the prosperous, not to forget that honesty is the best policy after all.”
A fast man in business, sooner or later, comes to grief. A young man in New York represented a New England house of great wealth and high standing. He was considered one of the smartest and most promising young men in the city. The balance in the bank, kept by the house, was very large, and the young man used to boast that he could draw his cheque any day for 200,000 dollars, and have it honoured. The New England house used a great deal of paper, and it could command the names of the best capitalists to any extent. He was accustomed to sign notes in blank and leave them with the concern, so much confidence had he in its soundness and integrity. Yet, strange to say, these notes, with those of other wealthy men, with nearly the whole financial business of the house, were in the hands of the young manager in New York. In the meanwhile he took a turn at Harry Hill’s to relieve the pressure of business. Low amusements, and the respectable company he found, suited him. From a spectator he became a dancer. From dancing he took to drinking. He then tried his hand at play, and was cleaned out every night, drinking deeply all the while. He became enamoured of a certain class of women, clothed them in silk, velvets, and jewels, drove them in dashing teams in the Central Park, secured them fine mansions, and paid the expenses of their costly establishments, all the while keeping the confidence of his business associates. In his jaded, wan, and dissipated look, men saw his attention to business. The New England manager of the house was the father of the young man. His reputation was without a stain, and confidence in his integrity was unlimited. In the midst of his business he dropped down dead. This brought things to a crisis, and an exposure immediately followed. The great house was bankrupt, and everybody ruined that had anything to do with it. Those who supposed themselves well off, found themselves quite the reverse. Widows and orphans lost their all. Men suspended business on the right hand and the left. In gambling, drinking, and dissipation, this young fellow had squandered the enormous sum of 1,400,000 dollars. It is an old familiar moral to be learnt from the story of that man’s decline and fall.
But to return to money-making. “I find,” said a shrewd merchant, “I make most money when I am least anxious about it.”
The distinguished American, James Halford, rose, step by step, up the ladder of fortune till he reached the top. Some twenty years before he had stood at the bottom, and it was curious to hear what the world said.
“It is all luck,” cried one. “Nothing but luck. Why, sir, I have managed at times to get up a step or two, but have always fallen down ere long; and now I have given up striving, for luck is against me.”
“No, sir,” cried another, “it is not so much luck as scheming; the selfish schemer goes up, while more honest folk remain at the foot.”
“Patronage does it all,” said a third. “You must have somebody to take you by the hand, and help you up, or you have no chance.”
James Halford heard all these varied opinions of the world, but still persisted in looking upwards, for he had faith in himself. He rose from the lowest situation in a store till he became a trader for himself, and amassed a large fortune.
Mr. Freedley’s unvarying motto was—“Self-reliance and self-dependence.” He said—“My observations through life satisfy me, that at least nine-tenths of those most successful in business start in life without any reliance except upon their own heads and hands—hoe their own row from the jump.”