Middletown transcript., 1883-11-16
Practical Ideal.

We are often apt to say in haste, that busi-
ness success is achieved by "dumb luck" 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
small mUdicum of truth within it only inten-
sifies the talsehood. No error equals that
which has in it a misleading element of fact.
\ 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 only by sacrifice of brain and Drawn;
flesh and blood are the currency that pay for
the victory. The best business success is that
in which a clear and definite ideal is en-
shrined, 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 a very commonplace sort of
business, and how men may do prosaic
things with a broad incentive, how a real
scholarship may inspire the management of
a common shop, how the large things OF the
manufacturing and commercial world are
the outcome not of a spirit of money-getting
money accumulation is only single one.
These are fragments of thought suggested
to the mind OF the writer by a visit to Oak
Hall, the metropolitan and cosmopolitan
clothing concern of Wanamaker & 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 cloth
fnr Fo1Y nd of 1safail in nf
large management. Is it not 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 grander
thing to combine all the talent necessary to
turn these things into practical form and
make them into clothing? We laugh at
tailors, and yet there is real art and deft
workmanship in mems clothing manufac-
tory. Is it not great thing to reach out, as
Oak Hall does, to sixty thousand men
throughout all the land, and bring their
clothing making to our city? And clothing
means not only coats and trousers and vests,
but shirts and neckties and suspenders, that |
are all the time taking grace and form under
the cunning fingers of the Oak Hall people |
The grasp and scope OF a business that lays |
its hand upon the telegraph, and pays scores
of thousands of dollars yearly to the express, |
that commands its artisans by br;gades and |
divisions, and draws to our city, from the
remote corners of the land, sums of money |
that in a few short years will count many
millions, is not mean nor prosaic, but great
and broad and grand A mere money-get-
ting idea would never realize such a success
as this, for all these things referred to here
enter into the Oak Hall success. Only the
ideal which tempts the impossible, only the
breadth of vision which sees all the world,
only the liberal ways which harness the pen
and the press together and add the pencil as
leader to both, could accomplish things like |
this, and yet this is only one of many great |
enterprises. Our illustration proves our |
point. Young men may well ponder such |
notions as are set forth Philadelphia
GIL