Newspaper Page Text
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The hardest fight
that faces the pio
neer is the battle
withhis own despair
The Bump Academy
By HERBERT KAUFMAN
Your line of talk won a hearing, but your line of goods lost it.
We gave you ashow, not an annual pass—we presented an opportunity, not a franchise.
Words and work each have their place—conversation is a vehicle for ideas, but we
couldn’t find any riding in yours. :
You were inspected before you were rejected. You bluffed—it didn’t go—so you must.
If we are incompetent judges of ability, everybody else isn’t a fool, and keener minds will
appreciate what we overlooked. But since you have regularly received the same verdict of
incapacity, why not begin to wonder if you aren’t wrong.
Of course you are sincere—conceit and you have talked matters over until you are
thoroughly convinced of your exceptional talents.
But Vanity always was a liar—if she ever told the truth it would kill her. Your case
isn't hopeless—a few more hard kicks may save you. You must be knocked down often
enough to learn how poorly you stand.
Some of us can’t be educated except in the Bump Academy.
You mistake the desire to have for the capacity to hold---confuse ambition with
efficiency, and any school that teaches the distinction is worth its cost. We aren’t prejudiced
against you---only against the things that handicap you.
You're green, raw, brash---you leave a bad taste in our experience.
You came to market before ripening into fitness. Mellow, tone down, study yourself,
graduate, come back with a better act, and we’ll book you. Your critics are not hostile. If
you weren't still worth while, nobody would bother to wound and help you.
We intend to cut acquaintance until you mend your ways. Our motives are surgical, we
must pain to cure.
We ivant you to suffer—the correction won't count if it can’t hurt your pride.
Your best friend has been your worst. When nobody else has a kind word for you, it
is time to stop being kind to yourself.
We grant your mettle—there are pay streaks in your mind, but at present they’re
cheapened by your faults, and worth little until refined. _
You're still a good prospect—that’s why we all dig at you.
. - -
A Formula for Millionaires
HE easiest way to ‘get a million is to dig it out of your brain.
T'l‘he greatest financial rewards of the inmediate future will
be found in rag bags, smelter tailings, garbage pails, fac
tory sweepings, saw ill refun, scrap heaps and by-prognen.
You don’'t have to move a hundred feet to loocate an over
looked opportunity. If you want riches nowadays, stay at home
and mine your mind.
» 24 [ ¢ -
ooy, W L S
VERSES 3) - Vim
by £\ . .
Herl:crt Kaufman 7 "“7 ’ ‘ _ T
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\ /,@:S URN 'round,that’s not
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2% B A o The past is dead: to
-3/} ‘\‘ Le¥aE MOrrows grow
£ 4P (I?portumty. The fare
P [ Tod etter-Luck-Land is a
WP £ Ly are.
U.f(z:fl» e f ) You ar;s not poor so long
s N 1/ as will
’i\; ) & 7> Persists within your being
2\ still.
‘\ eA AN \Vlilth capital of hands and
% --‘-.%“_1\;3 » head
Tl !)' {j:':\( ‘[k V™ A myriad of men have led
&.‘ {
b ¥ .7 ) Themselves to fortune.
G 88, N _ Pluck and pride
PR LN 2~ (Gave answer when their fel
,/f.' ’\{:&\\ NS lows lied .
T BAY ¢ LLY And told them that their
s \/ ,& A chanee had died.
il : E\\ \fgga: Try once again—the world
4 i.f-:"'i‘"fi.‘..‘ ',:a.‘_ 1S new
;,‘,j\:i‘..;i,"{:,:)-{’n"‘,-:;‘:.;,, ~?..‘,\,_,*» F.a(:h dav. Your chance?
ISR ANFn S D ATI Your chance 1s YOU.
Her]mxf&ufinanb\']eelc}ypaée
HEARST'S SUNDAY AMERICAN. ATLANTA, GA, SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, e
The First Lieutenant of Honesty.
HENX a man can hide his name, he ean hide his shame. KEvery hotel keeper
OO requires his guest to register. Registration is a guarantee of good conduct.
People behave where their identities are established. Certainty of detection
is a brake upon disorder. When folks know that they can be traced and held to
account they watch their conduct. Publicity is the first lfeutenant of honesty and
morality. ‘
Advertised goods must be right. Their identity is established. The maker’s
name and mark are fixed in every reader’s mind.
As'soon as a manufacturer has registered his product in printers’ ink, he places
his merchandise in the same pesition as when lte registers himself at a hotel—it
can’t go wrong without being found out. "
Stores and factories that do not advertise are like strangers in a strange
town—they'd be far more careful if they were better known.
: One Man Can Hang the Jury
N insistent notion doesn’t calculate odds, it upsets them. One earnest man
A sufficiently convinced of his cause can, by sheer pertinacity, convert or mod
ify the convictions of eleven earnesttalesmen. All the big things that ever
happened or are destined to be are one-man jobs.
Time and again, communities, nations and races have sentenced ideas and ideals
to death, but a single unquailing partisan has defended his opinion so nobly that
his lone courage rescued it to humanity.
The world loses 90 per cent. of human inspiration because the average brain
that conceives a big thought so often belongs to a poor fighter.
The existence of any radical project will always depend upon the persistence
with which its sponsor promotes it.
Copyright, 1918, by w Kaufman. Great Britain and All Other Rights Reserved
”
“The Low Brow on Olympus
THE HEEL OF ACHILLES
CHILLES was bathed in the Stvx at his birth,
To render him proof against all ills of earth.
(Our only concern with the brook at this minute
Is because Mrs. Whatshername dipped her child in it.)
The Angurs declared—and they g:)red in such lore—
That its water would battle-plate him to the core.
(“Invulnerate’ is the right word, but I’ll ecan it—
Tt's too hard to rhyme and, besides, who could scan itT)
If the lady in question had done as she ort,
He’d be hiring out to this day as a fort.
But his mother unwittingly framed the poor slob.
It was dark, she was nervous and bungled the job—
It hafpened she did not entirely seal
Achilles in magic—she left out the heel.
(She had to hold something or he would have drowned,
But with one spot exposed he was not quite hidebound.)
He swallowed her story, hook, sinker and line,
Inseribed on his buekler, ‘‘ All comers for mine.”
(Why imagine vourself in his place—you should care—
With a notion like that hiding under your hair!)
He chal:lenged the ‘“big ones,”” waived color, weight,
ass,
And left their %et limbs scattered over the grass.
They banged at his head and they hacked at his middle,
But none of 'em guessed where to tackle the riddle,
Till an arrow, by accident, cut short his joy—
Struck his heel—gave him lockjaw—and killed him
at Troy.
Moral:
What happened in Troy would result the same way
In Schenectady, if 'twere repeated today.
Every struggle in every age has revealed
That you don’t stand a chance if you aren’t well heeled.
e ———————————
Innocents Abroad. (Exporter’s Edition.)
N actor can’t play another man’s part before he
A is familiar with his lines and make-up. America
will never supplant Europe as a world-trader
until her business men make a closer study of foreign
markets.
Every country has its local peculiarities.
The temperamental tropican thinks deeper with
his senses than with his mind. Color and decoration,
which are trifling matters in the finish of our own
wagons and farm implements, are weighty considera
tions with the farmers of some lands.
Certain West Coast tribes habitually wear cotton
cloths of a standard design and refuse to change their
taste.
Goods intended for transportation in railroadless
mountain countries may not be packed in cartons be
yond a size and weight burro or llama can carry a-back.
Yellow is a sign of mourning here—green the
designation of a holy sect there. :
The use of animal fat, either as a preservative or
an ingredient, will disqualify merchangise. no matter
what its merit or price, where caste or religion has
rendered beef or mutton taboo—remember, the Indian
Mutiny sprang from serving troops tallow-treated am
munition. _
We have much to teach—but much to learn. We.
generally prefer to tell how to sell, instead of asking
the best way.
We are masters on our ground, but too often mas
tered on strange ground.
American products are honest, efficient and eco
nomically produced. Our greatest competition is not
with merit, but with information.
Europe is an old ‘world-trader, and wise in the
little follies of buff and brown human nature.
The ignorant and primitive are jealous of the
petty distinctions which differentiate classes and hotly
resent the ridicule of their ideas and disregard of
their will. :
In some parts of the earth the clock doesn’t move
more than an hour a day—we are ahead of the times
and apt to be correspondingly impatient.
Before our salesmen can wear a welcome path
around the globe, they must be educated to their jobs.
If we don’t first conform to the methods of Euro
pean trading, we won’t have a chance to reform Eu
rope’s markets to an appreciation of our superior wares
and ways. ;
An underdone roast may be preferable to an
overcooked joint, but the restaurant that insists upon
serving a rare cut, despite your distaste for it, won’t
get your steady custom..
" Give the custouner what he asks for—he pays the
check. ;
| There are sgots all over the universe where the
packing and ;f(ac age count before the goods.
The track of foreign commerce iz strewn with
sha}'p prejudices—if we don’t drive carefully we won’t
go far.
The man who al
ways “tells you so”
never tells you any
thing else