an unfair price would have been little to me personally--but it would
have saddled the new amalgamated industry and the investors with a
liability instead of an asset. It was certainly far easier to be pliable
than to be firm. Every kind of private pressure was brought to bear on
me to accede to the purchase of the property.

When this failed, all the immense engines for the formation of public
opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed
against me in the form of vulgar abuse. And that attack was very
cleverly directed. It made no mention of my refusal to buy a certain
mill for the combine at an excessive cost to the shareholding public. On
the contrary, those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the
investing public appealed to that public to condemn me for forming a
Trust.

I am prepared now to confess that I was bitterly hurt and injured by the
injustice of these attacks. But I regret nothing. Why? Because these
early violent criticisms taught me to treat ferocious onslaughts in
later life with complete indifference. A certain kind of purely cynical
intelligence would hold that I should have been far wiser to adopt the
pliable rôle. But that innate judgment which dwells in the recesses of
the mind tells me that my whole capacity for action in affairs would
have been destroyed by the moral collapse of yielding to that threat.
Pliability would have become a habit rather than a matter of judgment
and will, for fortitude only comes by practice.

Every young man who enters business will at some time or another meet a
similar crisis which will determine the bias of his career and dictate
his habitual technique in negotiation.