Milford chronicle., 1883-11-16
APTaciieal ideal.

We are often apt to say in haste,
that business success Is achieved by
dumb luck.n by accidents of birth
or family connection, by fortunate
gathering of the fruits of other mems
/ labor and toll. With the careless or
unthinking this may pass for TRUTH
/ but the sfrall mOdicum of truth within
it only intensifies the falsehood. No
error equals that which has in il q
misleading element OF fact. A half
truth is generally the greatest lie.
Therefore, thinking men, who have
lived long enough to know and judge,
are agreed that there is no royal road
to success. 1t comes Ouly by sacrifice
of brain and Drawn; flesh and blood
are the currency that pay for the vic
tory The best business success is that
in which a clear and definite ideal is
enshrined, as the axis about which
the whole enterprise revolves. The
moral side of a business life touches
the ideal, but it is not of the moral
that we are writing now; our thought
simply touches what may be the real
grandeur of Il very commonplace SOFT
of business, and how men may do pro-
sale things with a broad Incentive
how a real scholarship may inspire
the management of a common shop,
how the large things of the manutac-
turing and commercial world are the
outcome not of spirit of mOney-get-
ting alone, but of combination of
ideas of which money accumulation is
only single one.
These are fragments of thought sug-
gested to the mind of the writer by
visit to Oak Hall, the metropolitan
and cosmopolitan clothing concern Of
WanamakeT & Brown. There is only
a fragment of our townspeople-yes,
even of frequent visitors there that
have any notion of what the prOsaic,
almost stupid, business of making and
selling clothing for men and boys at
retail has in it of large management.
it not a grand thing to collect from
all the wooden manufacturing centres
of the world, the stuffs that enter into
the clothing of the men and boys of
great city like our own? Is it not a
grander thing to combine all the tai
lent necessary to turn these things
into practical form and make them
into clothing? We laugh at the tall
)rs, and yet there is real art and deft
in a mems clothing
Is it not a great thing
o reach out, as Oak Hall does, to sixty
thousand men throughout AL the land,
md bring their clothing making to
)ur city? and clothing means not
'nly coats and trousers and vests, but
hints and neckties and suspenders,
hat are all the time taking grace and
Orm under the cunning fingers of the
)ak Hall people. The grasp and scope
# business that lays its hand upon
he telegraph, and pays scores Of thou
ands of dollars yearly to the express,
bat commands its artisans by bri-
'ades and divisions. and draws to our
ity, from the remote corners of the
and, sums of money that in few
hort years will count many millions,
5 not mean nor prOsaic, but great and
road and grand. A mere money
citing idea would never realize such
success as this, for all these things
eferred to here enter into the Oak
Hall success. Only the ideal which
empts the impossible, only the
readth of vision which sees all the
yorId, only the liberal ways which
arness the pen and the ~ ess together
nd add the pencil as " der to both,
Ould accomplish thiD/ Ike this, and
ct this is only one q -eat en-
,rprises. Our illustraU proves our
Oint. Young men may well ponder
lch notions as are set forth here
hilddelphid EUenipg Call.