most over night, and this was going on when
old fields were being exhausted, so we were therefore often under the
double strain of losing the facilities in one place where we were
fully equipped, and having to build up a plant for storing and
transporting in a new field where we were totally unprepared. These
are some of the things which make the whole oil trade a perilous one,
but we had with us a group of courageous men who recognized the great
principle that a business cannot be a great success that does not
fully and efficiently accept and take advantage of its opportunities.

How often we discussed those trying questions! Some of us wanted to
jump at once into big expenditures, and others to keep to more
moderate ones. It was usually a compromise, but one at a time we took
these matters up and settled them, never going as fast as the most
progressive ones wished, nor quite so carefully as the conservatives
desired, but always made the vote unanimous in the end.

THE JOY OF ACHIEVEMENT

The part played by one of my earliest partners, Mr. H.M. Flagler, was
always an inspiration to me. He invariably wanted to go ahead and
accomplish great projects of all kinds, he was always on the active
side of every question, and to his wonderful energy is due much of the
rapid progress of the company in the early days.

It was to be expected of such a man that he should fulfil his destiny
by working out some great problems at a time when most men want to
retire to a comfortable life of ease. This would not appeal to my old
friend. He undertook, single handed, the task of building up the East
Coast of Florida. He was not satisfied to plan a railroad from St.
Augustine to Key West--a distance of more than six hundred miles,
which would have been regarded as an undertaking large enough for
almost any one man--but in addition he has built a chain of superb
hotels to induce tourists to go to this newly developed country.
Further than this, he has had them conducted with great skill and
success.

This one man, by his own energy and capital, has opened up a vast
stretch of country, so that the old inhabitants and the new settlers
may have a market for their products. He has given work to thousands
of these people; and, to crown all, he has undertaken and nearly
completed a remarkable engineering feat in carrying his road on the
Florida Keys into the Atlantic Ocean to Key West, the point set out
for years ago.

Practically all t