Self Help

The latter may be compared to the man who uses a trip hammer, and thereby accomplishes at one blow more than the former, who uses a tack-hammer, can accomplish with ten thousand blows.

Let us analyze, briefly, a few men who have made it their business to deal with the important or relevant facts pertaining to their life-work.

If it were not for the fact that this course is being adapted to the practical needs of men and women of the present workaday world, we would go back to the great men of the past - Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Socrates, Solomon, Moses and Christ - and direct attention to their habit of dealing with facts.

However, we can find examples nearer our own generation that will serve our purpose to better advantage at this particular point. Inasmuch as this is an age in which money is looked upon as being the most concrete proof of success, let us study a man who has accumulated most as much of it as has any other man in the history of the world - John D. Rockefeller.

Mr. Rockefeller has one quality that stands out, like a shining star, above all of his other qualities; it is his habit of dealing only with the relevant facts pertaining to his lifework.

As a very young man (and a very poor young man, at that) Mr. Rockefeller adopted, as his definite chief aim, the accumulation of great wealth. It is not my purpose, nor is it of any particular advantage, to enter into Mr. Rockefellers method of accumulating his fortune other than to observe that his most pronounced quality was that of insisting on fact as the basis of his business philosophy.

There are some who say that Mr. Rockefeller was not always fair with his competitors. That may or may not be true (as accurate thinkers we will leave the point undisturbed), but no one (not even his competitors) ever accused Mr. Rockefeller of forming snap-judgments or of underestimating the strength of his competitors. He not only recognized facts that affected his business, wherever and whenever he found them, but he made it his business to search for them until he was sure he had found them.

Thomas A. Edison is another example of a man who has attained to greatness through the organization, classification and use of relevant facts. Mr. Edison works with natural laws as his chief aids; therefore, he must be sure of his facts before he can harness those laws.