The Leavenworth weekly times. [volume] (Leavenworth, Kan.) 1870-1880, 1875-09-16
What We Need.

1t is said that nine -tenths of the people
who engage in what is called business in
this country, fail. Whether the estimate is
| correct or not we have no means of ascer-
tanning, but the showers OF failures, great
| and small, caused by the periodical jostles
that shake the business world, and the grad
ual disappearance OF houses and firms that
is constantly going ON all the lime, suggests
| its reasonableness. No careful observer
who has lived in the midst Of the business
whirl for two decades, Il closely watched
matters around him, can run his eyes back
over twenty years period without being
struck with the number OF wrecks that
mark it. As rule, the great successful firms
that stood at the head OF business in a pros
porous, enterprising community twenty
years ago have disappeared, and their
members are hoabling along, broken spirit
ed and unnoticed, in a vain attempt TO re-
gain footing in the rushing tide that
sweeps past them. The pride and splen-
dor of a once-evinced success have vanish
ed in the oyertaking failure the wealth
which those firm, strong hands once held
have turned 10 ashes the fortune and the
| influence and authority which have attend
=
| financial success has been turned into the
bitterness OF an irreirievable disaster. Why
/ is this the inexorable ending of 80 many
business experiences Why Is 1t that our
country furnishes SO many examples oil
temporary success that come TO pitiable
and tragic failures at last l. it not be-
cause our people lack the observation-disclosures
| that is nowhere 80 much needed as IN
business? Practical life with us abounds
| in destinations. Nowhere else in the world
is it invested with such marveis. There is
no other country on the globe where so
many magical results are exhibited,
because there is no other country on the
globe where they are demanded. Our rail-
road building, our mining operations, our
practical problems OF transit and carriage,
the founding OF States in the wilderness and
the connecting them with the central gov
ernment, the settlement OF our fertile prai-
ries, our immigration and emigration move
ments, the profitable planting OF cotton in
the South and OF grain in the West, and
the establishment Of manufactures every
where, the erection of splendid public build
ings, water-works, bridges and de-
pots-ali present such an inviting
field for employment, triumph and
wealth that our practical life is a perpet-
ual exhilaration, in which We lose our
heads. Every tolerably educated young
American knows how TO do business and
knows how to make money. There is not
young man to be found, reasonably
blessed with advantages, friends and social
position, who would give the snap OF his
| finger Tor moderate fortune on the con-
dition that he should lie content with it.
He thinks he can make better one by his
own e!forts-and as 4 general rule, he
can. But he docs not hold what he
grasps; he makes money, and he does not
save it. The very success that attends
his efforts lulls the thrifty qualities that
earned il to sleep, and in an evil hour OF
unaccountable infatuation he is made a
bankrupt. He trusts too much to his
employees; he sells too largely on credit !;
he embarks his means in disastrous specu-
lations; he neglects his business for poll
tics; or he commits some other folly, no
matter what, and goes down amid the other
wrecks whose lessons he failed to learn.
| Our failures are the same story, over and
over and over, be il Jay Cooke d Co., Dun
can, Sherman & Co., the Bank of Califor-
MIA, or any one OF the myriad smaller ex-
amples that occur in a business cycle-the
violation or disregard OF the safe, settled
rules, whose wisdom ten thousand failures
attest, but which ten thousand failures do
not enforce.-S. Louis Republican.