OneMan Power

Every successful concern is the result of a One-Man Power. Coöperation,

technically, is an iridescent dream--things coöperate because the man

makes them. He cements them by his will.



But find this Man, and get his confidence, and his weary eyes will look

into yours and the cry of his heart shall echo in your ears. "O, for

some one to help me bear this burden!"



Then he will tell you of his ndless search for Ability, and of his

continual disappointments and thwartings in trying to get some one to

help himself by helping him.



Ability is the one crying need of the hour. The banks are bulging with

money, and everywhere are men looking for work. The harvest is ripe. But

the Ability to captain the unemployed and utilize the capital, is

lacking--sadly lacking. In every city there are many five- and

ten-thousand-dollar-a-year positions to be filled, but the only

applicants are men who want jobs at fifteen dollars a week. Your man of

Ability has a place already. Yes, Ability is a rare article.



But there is something that is much scarcer, something finer far,

something rarer than this quality of Ability.



It is the ability to recognize Ability.



The sternest comment that ever can be made against employers as a class,

lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their

worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and

encouragement.



If you know the lives of men of Ability, you know that they discovered

their power, almost without exception, thru chance or accident. Had the

accident not occurred that made the opportunity, the man would have

remained unknown and practically lost to the world. The experience of

Tom Potter, telegraph operator at an obscure little way station, is

truth painted large. That fearful night, when most of the wires were

down and a passenger train went through the bridge, gave Tom Potter the

opportunity of discovering himself. He took charge of the dead, cared

for the wounded, settled fifty claims--drawing drafts on the

company--burned the last vestige of the wreck, sunk the waste iron in

the river and repaired the bridge before the arrival of the

Superintendent on the spot.



"Who gave you the authority to do all this?" demanded the

Superintendent.



"Nobody," replied Tom, "I assumed the authority."



The next month Tom Potter's salary was five thousand dollars a year, and

in three years he was making ten times this, simply because he could get

other men to do things.



Why wait for an accident to discover Tom Potter? Let us set traps for

Tom Potter, and lie in wait for him. Perhaps Tom Potter is just around

the corner, across the street, in the next room, or at our elbow.

Myriads of embryonic Tom Potters await discovery and development if we

but look for them.



I know a man who roamed the woods and fields for thirty years and never

found an Indian arrow. One day he began to think "arrow," and stepping

out of his doorway he picked one up. Since then he has collected a

bushel of them.



Suppose we cease wailing about incompetence, sleepy indifference and

slipshod "help" that watches the clock. These things exist--let us

dispose of the subject by admitting it, and then emphasize the fact that

freckled farmer boys come out of the West and East and often go to the

front and do things in a masterly way. There is one name that stands out

in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years

have passed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering

Ability. That man is Pericles. Pericles made Athens.



And to-day the very dust of the streets of Athens is being sifted and

searched for relics and remnants of the things made by people who were

captained by men of Ability who were discovered by Pericles.



There is very little competition in this line of discovering Ability. We

sit down and wail because Ability does not come our way. Let us think

"Ability," and possibly we can jostle Pericles there on his pedestal,

where he has stood for over a score of centuries--the man with a supreme

genius for recognizing Ability. Hail to thee, Pericles, and hail to

thee, Great Unknown, who shall be the first to successfully imitate this

captain of men.