The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-05-16
c. P. Huntington Says This Is
What Brings Success.
GIVES HIS OWN EXPERIENCE
How He Prepared TO Handle His Vast
Railway Interests-WaS Always
Trader.

From "A hardware store 10 the ma
nagement of the Central Pacific rail-
rood seems a long jump; but when C..
p. Huntington was asked to tell how
the transition was accomplished he re-
piled:
1T was merely evolution. l had
been a trader from my youth. L be-
gan gathering shillings when l was
eight years old, and had wide bust
ness experience before taking up rail-
road work. 1t was not jump for me.
1T isn't by jumps that healthy sue
cess is attained. It's bv steady work
and honesty of purpose. A middle
aged man may jump from one bust
ness to an entirely different one and
succeed, but it will need hard work
and the probabilities will be against
him. The foundation of success is laid
in youth.
Between 10 and % most men are
made. A man can learn more in those
seven years than in any others in his
life, yet those are the years that many
youths spend at college uniting them
selves for commercial pursuits, learn
ing things that are of no use to them
actually building up a barrier
against success.
The successful man learns the ru-
diments Of business in early life. The
unsuccessful man is the one who in his
ynuth watched the clock to see that he
did begin work a minute ahead of
time-or quit second behind it.
Those are the boys who are discharged
first, whenever the staff is reduced :;
but the boy who thinks of working
instead of quitting, and looks after his
employers interests instead of his
own ease, is the one who is kept on
and goes ahead and succeeds.
Success is simple thing. The
money saved in early life grows into
fortunes later on. The young man
who can save ten cents a day is q
man of sense. He is on the road tc
success. But the young man who
! trades this ten cents for cigar is {
| fool
There may be cases where fortune:
are made by jumps, but great success:
com from persistent effort. 1t is 8
mistake to point out the accompliS
he'd work of a successful life and ash
q young man to duplicate it. The
immensely of such a work appals him
1t is like taking him suddenly to tbs
top of a high steeple to see a great
city The great height makes him dir
zy but TO the steeplejack, who knows
his business and has scaled the steeple
it is quite a little matter. That is
the reason why rising men should no;
look ahead. They should work for to-
day and for to-day only, and if they dc
that faithfully and live economically
they Will be ready for whatever comes
on the morrow.
My part in the organization and
building of the Central Pacific did not
seem a great task for me, because my
hardware business, when l laid it
down, was greater than my railroad
business when 1 took it up. I call it a
hardware BUSINESS; we bought and sold
all kinds of things-thousands and
thousands of dollars worth of goods
that never saw the inside of our store.
We bought whole cargoes and sold
them direct from the ships. I recall
buying one cargo at 10 per cent above
invoice prices, paying only $1,000.
F"The aggregate business done by our
firm amounted to perhaps more
than So 900 900 annually, and so the
organization of the Central Pacific
came as a comparatively easy task"