t. But the
first ten thousand made, he can advance with greater freedom and take
affairs in his stride. He will have the confidence of experience, and
can paint with a big brush because all the details of affairs are now
familiar to his mentality. With this assured technique nothing will
check the career. "Why," says the innkeeper in an adaptation from
Bernard Shaw's sketch of Napoleon in Italy, "conquering countries is
like folding a tablecloth. Once the first fold is made, the rest is
easy. Conquer one, conquer all."

Such in effect is the career of the great captains of industry. Yet the
man who attains, by the practice of these rules, a great fortune, may
fail of real achievement and happiness. He may not be able to recognise
that the qualities of the aspirant are not exactly the qualities of the
man who has arrived. The sense of general responsibility must supersede
the spirit of private adventure.

The stability of credit becomes the watchword of high finance. Thus the
great money master will not believe that periods of depression are of
necessity ruinous. It is true that no great profits will be made in such
years of depression. But the lean years will not last for ever. Industry
during the period of deflation goes through a process like that of an
over-fat man taking a Turkish bath. The extravagances are eliminated,
new invention and energy spring up to meet the call of necessity, and
when the boom years come again it finds industry, like a highly trained
athlete, ready to pour out the goods and pay the wages. Economic
methods are nurtured by depression.

But when all has been said and done, the sceptic may still question us.
Is the capacity to make money something to be desired and striven for,
something worth having in the character, some proof of ability in the
mind? The answer is "Yes."

Money which is striven for brings with it the real qualities in life.
Here are the counters which mark character and brains. The money brain
is, in the modern world, the supreme brain. Why? Because that which the
greatest number of men strive for will produce the fiercest competition
of intellect. Politics are for the few; they are a game, a fancy, or an
inheritance. Leaving out the man of genius who flares out, perhaps, once
or twice in a century, the amount of ability which enables a man to cut
a very respectable figure in a Cabinet is extraordinarily low, compared
with that demanded in the world of industry and financ