3. Do not try to cut with too wide a swath. This last rule is the
most important of all. Many promising young men have fallen into
ruin from the neglect of this simple principle. It is so easy for
premature ambition to launch men out into daring schemes for which
they have neither the resources nor the experience. Acquire the
knowledge of values, practise economy, and learn to read the minds
of men, and your technique will then be perfected and ready for use
on wider fields. The instinct for values, the habit of economy, the
technique of business, are only three forms of the supreme quality
of that judgment which is success.

For these reasons it is the first £10,000 which counts. There is the
real struggle, the test of character, and the warranty of success. Youth
and strength are given us to use in that first struggle, and a man must
feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he is
going to be a great man of business. They must shake the very fibre of
his being as the conception of a great picture shakes an artist. But the
first ten thousand made, he can advance with greater freedom and take
affairs in his stride. He will have the confidence of experience, and
can paint with a big brush because all the details of affairs are now
familiar to his mentality. With this assured technique nothing will
check the career. "Why," says the innkeeper in an adaptation from
Bernard Shaw's sketch of Napoleon in Italy, "conquering countries is
like folding a tablecloth. Once the first fold is made, the rest is
easy. Conquer one, conquer all."

Such in effect is the career of the great captains of industry. Yet the
man who attains, by the practice of these rules, a great fortune, may
fail of real achievement and happiness. He may not be able to recognise
that the qualities of the aspirant are not exactly the qualities of the