Vol. 37, No. 5 HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, MAY 1956

The Fruits of Enterprise

T O be enterprising means getting things done.People who get things done are preferred by

society to those who do not.

The prizes in life go to those who invent some betterway of doing something old, or something new thatmakes the old unnecessary; to the scholars who decipherinscriptions or solve equations; to the industrialistswho improve production, streamline manufacture, orincrease distribution.

For proof of this it is necessary only to look around usin Canada, where we have a productive society builtby imaginative, hard-hitting and hard-working menand women. Enterprise is a positive, dynamic faith inthe possibility of improving things, and in one’s abilityto do the job.

Enterprise doesn’t consist entirely of big things. Itis enterprise when a home craftsman puts together hisfirst piece of furniture, even if it is only a footstool madefrom a butter-box. It is enterprise when a clerk demon-strates a time- or material-saving way of doing hiswork. It is enterprise when a school-girl makes and sellsChristmas cards so that she may buy presents for herfamily.

Addressing graduates of Knowlton High School afew years ago, John Bassett, President and ManagingDirector of the Montreal Gazette, (now Chairman ofthe Board) said this: "If I have advice to give to youyoung people, I would say ’do not always be chasingsecurity.’ I would say ’do some adventuring.’... Letus recapture the splendid spirit of our pioneer fore-fathers, who by courage and hard work made thiswilderness blossom like the rose."

This New World gave special opportunities to enter-prising men. They could start any business they liked,but they knew that they had to swim by their ownefforts, or sink. The right to risk failure became part ofthe liberty to try for success. With passage of the years

there have come new professions, new businesses, newopportunities of many kinds, every one providing achance for the person eager to grasp it.

The man of enterprisePeople can be divided into active individuals and

passive individuals, into those eager for responsibilityand action and those content to wait until action isforced upon them. The latter sometimes profess tolook upon men of enterprise as being somehow "queer",which reminds us of what was said about Vincent vanGogh, that although he may have been a split person-ality he was in addition an artist.

The enterprising man must be presumed to havequalities of some sort in which others fail. He is a leaderwho faces an adversary to gain an object. He dares totry untried ways. He has something unappeased withinhim, seeking expression. He carries his head high, sothat he may see far horizons. He is prepared to copewith the unexpected and the unpredictable throughoriginality and ingenuity.

Striving for superiority has been behind every humancreation and every contribution to our culture. Weproceed from below to above, from minus to plus, fromdefeat to victory. When we become satisfied with ourpresent circumstances the first stage of degenerationsets in.

Most people have stirrings toward improvement oftheir condition, improvement in understanding, inknowledge, or in material things, but to be effectiveour expectations must have a clearly defined objective.One cannot be master of one’s fate if one has no intenseaim, specific, concrete and definite. Without that, oneis at the mercy of chance and circumstance.

Having an objective and the will to reach it, we mustapply ourselves indefatigably to its attainment. Re-solution and determination are strength-giving forceswhen one comes to scaling barriers.

Initiative is required. This is the ability to think andto start and to do new things, to break with the patternof the past. The man who knew sports by playing inthem, and salesmanship by practising it, showed in-itiative when he set up in business producing athleticcrests and uniforms: in eleven years his capital grewfrom $586 to $105,000, and he was still only 34 yearsof age.

Enterprise need not be a lonely quest, with everyindividual chasing his own fire-fly. The enterprisingman may be a leader, inspiring, guiding, interpretingand co-ordinating. Such a man will climb to high placesin company with men who are part of his plan and whobenefit by his leadership.

About opportunityIs there a law of opportunity? Because there is much

woolly thinking about opportunity, it may be well toinquire whether there are some observations which,taken together, seem to provide a guide.

No one will deny that opportunity most often offersitself to men according to their ability, their power ofvision, their knowledge, and their will to work. Oppor-tunities do not exist in any particular industry or pro-fession, but within men themselves. It is the men whodetermine the number of opportunities they will grasp.Some will waste their time waiting for a big opportunity~while others are taking advantage of the little ones andare thereby preparing themselves for the great chance.

Some people have not learned the lesson, so welldemonstrated throughout the history of business, that

opportunity doesn’t bruise its knuckles knocking at aman’s door; it doesn’t shout, but whispers. Sometimesit has to be sought. It has been asked in a speculativeway what Hercules would have done had there beenno llon, and hydra, and boar, that he had to conquer,and no apples to snatch from the garden of the Hes-perides. One cannot imagine Hercules, a man of en-terprise, wrapping himself in his cloak and going tosleep while waiting for a kind fate to bring him somejob worthy of his prowess.

Enterprise in the world of business and industrydoes not always consist of herculean tasks like cleaningout the Augean stables. It may start very small. Allvaluable processes in electricity arose out of little labor-atory experiments. Most of our great inventions mark-ing the beginning and development of the industrialage were made by men doing things altogether apartfrom their assigned jobs, without pay, outside of work-ing hours, and often entirely unnoticed or despised bytheir superiors and their fellow workmen.

Seeing opportunity isn’t everything. The man whosees a dozen opportunities but has not initiative andenergy enough to act on one of them won’t get very far.

The frontier of achievement in business, the professions,industry and public service is closed to the man who islazy, or afraid, or unimaginative.

Imag4nation plus enthusiasmTo the self-absorbed, vision is impossible. We need

to look outward, picturing our job or our business as itmight be in another environment of place or time.The successful enterpriser is a person who sees whatothers do not.

An Italian immigrant who wanted to start his owngrocery store went the right way about it. He workedas a labourer until he saved enough to buy a team anda wagon, then made his living for two years collectinggarbage in the district where he hoped to have hisstore. He tore the labels off the empty tins and foodpackages, and stacked them in his room. Then hesorted his labels into piles by kind of product and brand.When the time came to lay in stock for his store, hebought the brands for which he had the tallest stacksof labels. Goods didn’t go bad on his shelves, becausehis individual job of market research had shown himwhat his prospective customers wanted.

Having explored the possibilities and formed animaginative plan, then we must call upon enthusiasm,the most dynamic of human qualities, to put the en-terprise into gear. Nothing great was ever achievedwithout well-directed enthusiasm.

In all this preliminary work- as, indeed, through-out his active life- the man of enterprise relies uponhis own efforts rather than upon the help or patronageof others. He trusts his own judgment. He is self-reliant. He doesn’t lose momentum by waiting forothers to tell him what course to follow. He has thecourage to make up his mind; to risk mistakes in orderto get things done.

Courage is of the essence of enterprise. Anythingthat moves around increases its risks and runs intodanger: only the inert escape, and they accomplishnothing. The timid find everything impossible; theynever discover opportunity; they obey circumstancesinstead of creating and commanding them.

Lieutenant Hornblower demonstrated the spirit ofenterprise in one of C.S. Forester’s delightful stories:"I’d rather be in trouble for having done somethingthan for not having done anything." But audacityshould not degenerate into rashness. True courage re-quires knowledge, and the man will profit who setshimself to uncover all possible guiding facts beforecommitting himself to a project.

Energy and persistencyHaving decided upon a course, the enterprising man

will lose no time before getting things under way. Atrainer gave this advice about winning races: "The

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thing to do is to get out in front at the start and improveyour position from there on."

Hesitation is fatal to enterprise. It unnerves a manand dissolves his determination. Sometimes it is well todo something, anything, rather than wait for the ulti-mate perfection of doing exactly the right thing.

The enterprising man, launched upon his effort,will wish for a 30-hour day and a ten-day week. Hewill pursue his course relendessly. His energy supportsand enlarges his ambition: indeed, ambition deprivedof drive is an idle dream. Excellence in business or aprofession or in any other walk of life is beyond thereach of indolence.

Even a man who is not a genius can achieve greatly ifhe has ambition, the initiative to start doing somethingabout it, and the energy to apply himself industriously.We need not fear being drawn too far. There are menenough around us whose exclusive mission in life, itseems, is to extinguish the fires we kindle. The excessesof the thoughts, hopes and work of the enterprisingman are essential if the average of what he achieves isto come up to his desired goal.

Common sense and calmness will keep us withinbounds, and avert the frustration sure to be experiencedby the man who invents a universal solvent and thentries to invent a container for it.

Some case historiesThe stories of men and women who have succeeded

in their efforts are instructive and useful as helps,guides and incentives. Here are some abbreviatedexamples of the power of self-help, of patient purpose,resolute working, and steadfast enterprise. These aretrue stories taken from the lives of customers of thisbank, drawn from every province.

This man came from the Ukraine when he was 20,started to learn English, and worked in a grocery store.After five years he opened his own store, but had notenough money to pay for a room, so he slept under thecounter. It was tough going for several years, but todayhe has a chain of retail grocery stores and a wholesalesupply house.

Talk about starting small! Here is a youth whobought a carton of razor blades, used the profit to buymore merchandise, and kept on going. Now he hasboth wholesale and retail outlets, and is comfortablyfixed financially.

This man was a musician. Advent of a baby in hisfamily started him thinking about building a crib, andhe ended up with a complete nursery unit He nowdraws a royalty on every unit sold in five countries.Another invention of his, selling for $1, will return himfive cents on each of an estimated three million saleson this continent alone.

A farmer believed in soil conservation enough to dosomething about it. He invented a sub-surface culti-vator, found it met the needs of his neighbours so wellthat they borrowed it, and finally he went into pro-duction. Today, his factory employs fifty men.

After working for other people for twenty years,Mrs .... launched out on her own in 1946 with courageand initiative. Three years hard work resulted in awholesale business in a staple commodity with acountry-wide market.

A man and his partner started a pick-up and deliveryservice, using two ancient cars. After only a year theyhad seven trucks and drivers, an office complete withsecretary, and an assistant. They are still growing.

Hard work, thrift and foresight helped two young menfrom a humble start in radio parts to ownership oftheir own factory and a turnover of a quarter milliondollars a year.

No sudden rise to success is told of in this case, butthe steady building up of business over a period of 60years. The fish products factory with which this busi-ness started grew to twelve factories with annual turn-over getting on for $5 million, and the market isworld-wide.

This is about a Japanese-Canadian. He got togethermachinery, worked many hours a day, and after quitea struggle succeeded in establishing himself in pro-duction of a record player. After four years (while notyet 30 years of age) he branched out into making otherelectrical appliances. In one year he sold 50,000 ofone piece of apparatus.

A father and two sons divide the work of a bakeryaccording to their individual interests: producing,marketing and financing. From one stove 20 years ago,the business has grown to a bakery and two warehouses.

When farmers started in the honey business it gavethis planing mill operator an idea. He went in formaking supplies such as hives, then progressed tofoundations, extractors, and other bee-keepers’ needs.At the end of 15 years turnover was nearly $500,000a year, and 35 people were employed.

Consider how enterprise can be carried on from onegeneration to another: Col. R. S. McLaughlin’s grand-father started making axe handles for his own usewhen he was clearing land at Enniskillen. He madesuch good axe handles that his neighbours asked himto make some for them. Then he started buildingwooden sleighs, expanded to the making of carriages,and eventually the McLaughlin automobile: today,General Motors of Canada Ltd.

The professions, too, hold out bright prospects forthe enterprising young man. Dr. Samuel M. Best wasborn in Maitland, Nova Scotia, worked his way throughthe schools of New Hampshire and Massachusetts,

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graduated from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy,and became president of the Cuticura Corporation.

Overcoming difficultiesThere are many obstacles in the way of a venture-

some man, but there will always be found men who willdefy the odds and succeed. The difficulty may be strongcompetition, a decline in business, a subordinate’sincapability, or it may be something within the manhimself.

Physical limitations can be overcome, too. A youngNova Scotian mine foreman suffered a spinal woundafter the invasion of Europe, and was hospitalized as aparaplegic. Quite unfitted for anything in his own lineof work, he took up study of secretarial practice, andbecame secretary of the Quebec Division of the CanadianParaplegic Association. He is now organizing a work-shop for handicapped people.

All these are stories of successful enterprise. But manypeople have failed, and why should not failure bechronicled as well as success? There is no reason, exceptthat a record of mere failure would be excessivelydepressing and uninstructive.

Men who succeed do not always do so by steadyincrement. They have their set-backs and partial failuresand complete collapses, but by persistency, and takinga second breath, and extending their knowledge, theyovercome the ill that has happened and win throughto success.

What are some of the apparent reasons for failure?Faulty appraisal of one’s qualifications; over-optimisticview of opportunities; lack of required assets, whethermoney, equipment, or skill; too-easy satisfaction;fixation at a lower level than need be. "Man is what hehas it in him to become", is a belief expressed byAristotle, to which we would add that he needs toknow what that is.

The man of enterprise will not be disheartened byfailure in one particular field. He will not be contentwith anything but success, and if it is not found herehe will seek it there. He will not fixate when he reachesa plateau of partial or minor success, but having gotone idea upon its feet he will spring another.

There is always some degree of uncertainty abouthuman projects. It has been said that a philosopherinvented "chance" to cover the astonishing fact thatthere were certain phenomena for which he foundhimself unable to account. From that conception, somepeople have gone on to see in "chance" or "luck" apositive force that may be invoked to help them towardtheir objectives.

The man of enterprise will banish the idea of luckfrom his mind. He will accept every opportunity, how-ever small, to make progress toward his objective. Ifthere is no opportunity proffered him, he will seek tomake it.

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/1 never-ending questThere can be no permanent satisfaction for the en-

terprising person in any work that has reached itspeak. His goal recedes as he advances. He is uneasy andrestless unless he is on his way somewhere. Sir WilliamVan Horne, said his biographer, was "eternally tryingto get to the end of something, so that he might beginall over again."

A crowded life is a happy llfe for the enterprisingman. To have many different things to do in every day,and somewhat more than he can do at all times, keepshis energies alive and his faculties sharp. He is not thesort of man to build a business and then spend histime at the club telling about it. He will always havesome finishing touches to put on the job that’s nearlydone, and some plans to assess for the job that iscoming up.

There are challenging openings for Canadians of allages from the ’teens to maturity and beyond. Resource-ful young people who have taken the pains to get agood general education will find spots awaiting them inboth big and small businesses. There are advisers intheir universities and schools who will help them tofind opportunities in keeping with their talents andabilities. They should approach these advisers in thespirit of finding out, not where they will be tomorrowor next year, but ten, twenty, forty years from now --providing they have the initiative, enterprise and driveto make their way there.

Not long ago, the Chairman and President of thisbank said in an address something that is apropos: "Thebest a banking career has to offer the young man isnot, as popular opinion would have it, security; butrather the stimulating challenge afforded by abundantopportunity for advancement in open competition inwhich nothing counts but the man’s own qualificationsand attitude to his work. As a matter of fact, the banksview with a jaundiced eye the young fellow on thethreshold of his life’s work who is preoccupied with thetype of pension which will some day become his."

There are, shaping up in today’s offices, factories,workshops, laboratories and inventors’ rooms all mannerof wonderful things that are going to excite and satisfythe world ten and twenty years hence. The new frontiersof technology and the new world markets opened up byexpanding industrialization promise new opportunitiesfor those who are willing to qualify themselves and tohustle around and find them.

The point of this essay is that however new andthrilling the prospect may be, the man who wishes toachieve in coming years needs virtues that are old-fashioned but basic: study, application, initiative,diligence, determination, perseverance, courage, self-reliance, patience, honesty, and a purpose in life.

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