The Law of Success: In Sixteen Lessons. Reading Time
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of organized, co-ordinated effort. Every military strategist understands the value of sowing seeds of dissension in the ranks of the opposing forces, because this breaks up the power of co-ordination back of the opposition. During the late world war much was heard about the effects of propaganda, and it seems not an exaggeration to say that the disorganizing forces of propaganda were much more destructive than were all the guns and explosives used in the war.
One of the most important turning-points of the world war came when the allied armies were placed under the direction of the French General, Foch. There are well informed military men who claim that this was the move which spelled doom for the opposing armies.
Any modern railroad bridge is an excellent example of the value of organized effort, because it demonstrates quite simply and clearly how thousands of tons of weight may be borne by a comparatively small group of steel bars and beams so arranged that the weight is spread over the entire group.
There was a man who had seven sons who were always quarreling among themselves. One day he called them together and informed them that he wished to demonstrate just what their lack of co-operative effort meant. He had prepared a bundle of seven sticks which he had carefully tied together. One by one he asked his sons to take the bundle and break it. Each son tried, but in vain. Then he cut the strings and handed one of the sticks to each of his sons and asked him to break it over his knee. After the sticks had all been broken, with ease, he said:
“When you boys work together in a spirit of harmony you resemble the bundle of sticks, and no one can defeat you; but when you quarrel among yourselves anyone can defeat you one at a time.”
There is a worth-while lesson in this story of the man and his seven quarrelsome sons, and it may be applied to the people of a community, the employees and employers in a given place of employment, or to the state and nation in which we live.
Organized effort may be made a power, but it may also be a dangerous power unless guided with intelligence, which is the chief reason why the sixteenth lesson of this course is devoted largely to describing how to direct the power of organized effort so that it will lead to success; that sort of success which is founded upon truth and justice and fairness that lead to ultimate happiness.
One of the outstanding tragedies of this age of struggle and money-madness is the fact that so few people are engaged in the effort which they like best. One of the objects of this course is to help each student find his or her particular niche in the world’s work, where both material prosperity and happiness in abundance may be found. For this purpose a Character Analysis Chart accompanies the sixteenth lesson. This chart is designed to help the student take inventory of himself and find out what latent ability and hidden forces lie sleeping within him.
This entire course is intended as a stimulus with which to enable you to see yourself and your hidden forces as they are, and to awaken in you the ambition and the vision and the determination to cause you to go forth and claim that which is rightfully yours.
Less than thirty years ago a man was working in the same shop with Henry Ford, doing practically the same sort of work that he was doing. It has been said that this man was really a more competent workman, in that particular sort of work, than Ford. Today this man is still engaged in the same sort of work, at wages of less than a hundred dollars a week, while Mr. Ford is the world’s richest man.
What outstanding difference is there between these two men which has so widely separated them in terms of material wealth? Just this — Ford understood and applied the principle of organized effort while the other man did not.
In the little city of Shelby, Ohio, as these lines are being written, for the first time in the history of the world this principle of organized effort is being applied for the purpose of bringing about a closer alliance between the churches and the business houses of a community.
The clergymen and business men have formed an alliance, with the result that practically every church in the city is squarely back of every business man, and every business man is squarely back of every church. The effect has been the strengthening of the churches and the business houses to such an extent that it has been said that it would be practically impossible for any individual member of either class to fail in his calling. The others who belong to the alliance will permit no such failures.
Here is an example of what may happen when groups of men form an alliance for the purpose of placing the combined power of the group back of each individual unit. The alliance has brought both material and moral advantages to the city of Shelby such as are enjoyed by but few other cities of its size in America. The plan has worked so effectively and so satisfactorily that a movement is now under way to extend it into other cities throughout America.
That you may gain a still more concrete vision of just how this principle of organized effort can be made powerful, stop for a moment and allow your imagination to draw a picture of what would likely be the result if every church and every newspaper and every Rotary Club and every Kiwanis Club and every Advertising Club and every Woman’s Club and every other civic organization of a similar nature, in your city, or in any other city in the United States, should form an alliance for the purpose of pooling their power and using it for the benefit of all members of these organizations.
The results which might easily be attained by such an alliance stagger the imagination!
There are three outstanding powers in the world of organized effort. They are: The churches, the schools and the newspapers. Think what might easily happen if these three great powers and molders of public opinion should ally themselves together for the purpose of bringing about any needed change in human conduct. They could, in a single generation, so modify the present standard of business ethics, for example, that it would practically be business suicide for anyone to try to transact business under any standard except that of the Golden Rule. Such an alliance could be made to produce sufficient influence to change, in a single generation, the business, social and moral tendencies of the entire civilized world.
Such an alliance would have sufficient power to force upon the minds of the oncoming generations any ideals desired.
Power is organized effort, as has already been stated! Success is based upon power!
That you may have a clear conception of what is meant by the term “organized effort” I have made use of the foregoing illustrations, and for the sake of further emphasis I am going to repeat the statement that the accumulation of great wealth and the attainment of any high station in life such as constitute what we ordinarily call success, are based upon the vision to comprehend and the ability to assimilate and apply the major principles of the sixteen lessons of this course.
This course is in complete harmony with the principles of economics and the principles of Applied Psychology. You will observe that those lessons, which depend, for their practical application, upon knowledge of psychology, have been supplemented with sufficient explanation of the psychological principles involved to render the lessons easily understood.
Before the manuscripts for this course went to the publisher they were submitted to some of the foremost bankers and business men of America, that they might be examined, analyzed and criticized by the most practical type of mind. One of the best known bankers in New York City returned the manuscripts with the following comment:
“I hold a master’s degree from Yale, but I would willingly exchange all that this degree has brought me in return for what your course on the Law of Success would have brought me had I been afforded the privilege of making it a part of my training while I was studying at Yale.
“My wife and daughter have also read the manuscripts, and my wife has named your course the master key-board of life’ because she believes that all who understand how to apply it may play a perfect symphony in their respective callings, just as a pianist may play any tune when once the key-board of the piano and the fundamentals of music have been mastered.”
No two people on earth are exactly alike, and for this reason no two people would be expected to attain from this course the same viewpoint. Each student should read the course, understand it and then appropriate from its contents whatever he or she needs to develop a well