BUSINESS LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15560, 18 March 1914, Page 10

BUSINESS LIFE.

THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. The world can find plenty of men to handle its big jobs. No trouble nowadays to get folks who'll snip an isthmus or move a mountain or tunnel a river for you. Accomplishing impossibilities is an every-day trade. If you can pay the bill there are a thousand quiet, bespectacled gentlemen who will seriously undertake a transcontinental tunnel or a 50-block hotel. Big figures don't frighten us— modern arithmetic specialises in tremendous calculations. The new civilisation dares to achieve what yesterday feared to dream. The giants have come back to earth. Cyclops is roaming the universe. His stature, however, is a dimension of brain instead of brawn. We lack folks who'll do small things in a big. way. There is a weak link in our chain of organisation. We pay too much for errors. Their cost is pro rata to the scale of our calculations. We have been so eager and absorbed in the perfecting of driving wheels and gears that we have forgotten all about the bolts, nuts, and screws. A minor mind becomes negatively powerful the instant it is permitted to assume a responsible obligation in a vital undertaking. The moment a valuable letter is entrusted to an errand boy, for the time being, he becomes the most important factor in the series of operations which have culminated in the communication delegated to his care. If he fails to promptly and precisely fulfil his orders, all the effort, ingenuity, and intelligence antecedent to his entry into the situation are jeopardised. Watch your little people. You aTe apt to underestimate their capacity for damage. Because they cannot create you are liable to forget their power to wreck. A crawfish cannot build a dyke, but it can dig a hole that will destroy one. THE LIKE OF HONESTY. Credit is a use we make of morals. There was doubtless a good deal of hesitation about granting credit for the first time among men. However, after the process had been repeated a number of times with safety, we were glad to make a practice of it because new conveniences and business expansion resulted. Like the insurance companies, we found that a proportion of our risks brought heavy losses. If these losses had not held within reasonable limits, we would have discarded credit on the spot. In other words, the morals with which we worked turned out to be worthy of a certain amount of confidence. Honesty is a very common quality and men can generally be depended on to meet their obligations if doing so brings no hardship. It is when payment means selfdenial and personal hardship that the man is put to the test. Men have been seen to stand up and strip themselves of their last penny to meet their just debts. While there is something about this that attracts attention, still, the man is only doing what he agreed to do; and there should be nothing about carrying out the terms of his contract that should glorify him even if he does it at a loss. The men who can meet loss with such fortitude are men of integrity- But honourable men have been the bulwark of commerce and industry in all times.