Life's highway is strewn with failures, just as the sea bed is strewn with wrecks.
A large percentage of those who embark in commercial undertakings fail, according to the records of commercial agencies.
Why do men fail? Why do adventures into business, happily launched, terminate in disastrous wreck?
Why do the few succeed and the many fail? Some failures are relative and not absolute; a partial success is achieved; a success that goes limping along through life; but the goal of ambition is unreached, the heart's desire unattained.
There are so many elements that enter into business that it is impossible to more than indicate them. Health, natural aptitude, temperament, disposition, a right start and in the right place, hereditary traits, good judgment, common sense, level-headedness, etc., are all factors which enter into one's chance of success in life. The best we can do in one chapter is to hang out the red flag over the dangerous places; to chart the rocks and shoals, whereon multitudes of vessels, which left the port of youth with flying colors, favoring breezes and every promise of a successful voyage, have been wrecked and lost.
The lack of self-confidence and lack of faith in one's ideas in one's mission in life have caused innumerable failures.
People who don't get on and who don't know why, do not realize the power of trifles to mar a career, what little things are killing their business or injuring their profession; do not realize how little things injure their credit; such as the lack of promptness in paying bills, or meeting a note at the bank.
Many men fail because they thought they had the field and were in no danger from competition, so that the heads of the firm took it easy, or because some enterprising up-to-date, progressive young man came to town, and, before they realized it, took their trade away from them, because they got into a rut, and didn't keep up-to-date stock and an attractive store.
They don't realize what splendid salesmen, an attractive place of business, up-to-date methods, and courteous treatment of customers mean.
Men often fail because they do not realize that creeping paralysis, caused by dry rot, is gradually strangling their business. Many business men fail because they dare not look their business conditions in the face when things go wrong, and do not adopt heroic methods, but continue to use palliatives, until the conditions are beyond cure, even with a surgeon's knife.