There is one small business practice, the importance of which for the boy is too frequently overlooked; that is, the practice of carrying a small amount of change in his pocket. He must learn to use his money thoughtfully and not merely on every occasion of his being allowed to have it. He must acquire the habit of self-restraint in the use of money. To do this is to learn to spend judiciously. To have reached this stage of financial training is a sufficient guarantee that the youth is proceeding well on his way toward success in business enterprise.
Start on a small scale
Then, give your growing son as wide a variety of experience in work and in watching business affairs as the situation will permit of. During the process of this mental growth help him to make a small investment in something that will grow and increase under his intelligent care. Let us assume that your specialty is a certain strain of corn or a certain breed of cattle. If the boy shows an interest in this matter, start him in at an early age, say ten to fourteen, on his own account. Give him in exchange for his work a small plot of ground on which to grow corn, perhaps with a view to his later entering the boys’ contest for a prize. Or, help him to get a small beginning in the cattle business.
But in case the lad shows no interest in your business, do not let the matter seriously trouble you for a moment. Simply continue to give him his general education, including the best school course available and a training in the performance of work as well as the judicious use of the spending money that may come into his hands. Careful study of the boy may indicate to you that his aptitude for business runs in the direction of something to which you are giving little or no attention but to which you may in time bring him.
There is the case of a successful wheat raiser who discovered his son’s fondness for thoroughbred cattle. So the boy was carefully started on a small scale in the business of raising short-horns. To-day that son is known far and wide as an able specialist in this line of stock breeding. Now, if the father in this case had done as thousands of other farmers are still doing; namely, if he had attempted to force the boy, against the latter’s natural inclination, to take up wheat raising or any other undesirable business, then, the son would have most probably skipped off for the city and secured a fourth-rate place for the mere wages it would bring. Some day this tragic, oft-repeated story of mismanagement and misdirection of the growing boy will come out in all its distressing details.
Give your son a square deal
Deal with your young son on business principles from the beginning. Do not hastily and unwisely give him a piece of property that will have to be taken from him in the future because of its having grown into a disproportionate value. This old form of mistreatment of the country boy has been the means of thwarting the business integrity of many a promising youth.
If the boy’s small beginning develops under his care into a business of large proportions, the only check or hindrance that the ethics of the case will allow is that you treat with him on fair business terms, just as you would with any good business man. You may cause him to bear all his own personal expenses and all the expense connected with the care and development of his live stock or crop. Then the matter of curtailing him must stop. And if the son soon becomes able to buy you out, it is certainly an affair to be proud of, not a thing to hinder by unfair means.
Keep the boy’s perfect good will
It is a serious matter to lose the boy’s confidence or in any way break faith with him, even though there be nothing about the place in which you can make him take a business interest. As he grows to maturity his own inner nature must gradually guide him into the way of a calling—and a divine calling at that it may prove to be. It may not seem out of place to quote the words of a religious teacher who says: “Do you not know that if one’s inner nature points out clearly and inspiringly what he should undertake for a life work, such thing may be regarded as the Voice of the Divine One speaking faithfully through the instrumentality of one of his own creatures?”