Part 16

With good clear farm land you can always go to the nearest bank and borrow from sixty to seventy-five per cent. of its value.

Real estate is the true basis of wealth, and if you want to play a sure game, buy land that produces things.

When you buy vacant property in a large city, it is mere speculation. The land does not bring in any remuneration, and you are simply betting that the prices will increase.

Every large city has abundant instances of vacant property that is not worth as much now as it was ten or twenty years ago. Real estate booms come in cycles. Prices go up and men get the fever and buy vacant property. The boom explodes, property goes down and you can't get your money back. The chances are you have bought the property on two or three years' time, and it certainly is paying for a white elephant when you are paying for land that is worth less than what it cost you. You cannot get out, however, because the original payment has already been made, and your only hope is to save something on your investment.

Notwithstanding the fact that certain business sections and certain residence sections in any city steadily increase in price, yet the average real estate in the city increases by very slow percentage. The same amount of money, put out in mortgages, with the interest added and compounded, will develop wealth greater than the average vacant property investment, for where one lot soars up to a high price there are a hundred that don't increase at all, and the picking out of the lot that is going to increase in value is as hard as picking out the horse that is going to win the race. It is because the vacant city property has only speculative value that the business man should not touch it.

Buy farm property that you can rent. It will bring you interest on your money right along, and the tendency of farm land is and always has been steadily forward.

Mr. Yerkes, of Chicago, was a speculator who made millions in the street-car system. He was thoroughly familiar with Hydraulics, and he soaked the stocks as full of water as possible and then unloaded on the investors who speculated in street-car stocks. These speculators are now holding the bag. When Mr. Yerkes closed out his holdings in Chicago he granted an interview, and one truth he uttered in that interview has ever been remembered by the writer. It is so valuable an expression coming from such a successful speculator that we are going to give it to you. It is as follows: "I have never known a business man to successfully speculate in grains or stocks for two years."

The business man who is watching the ticker or calling up the Stock Exchange every day, who takes little flyers, is skating on mighty thin ice.

When you buy farms you are exchanging your money for the most certain thing in the world, for the basis of all wealth is land, and money simply represents the things which come out of the land. The things that grow on the land are exchanged for gold, and the gold is exchanged for things that come out of the land. The Government exchanges the gold for pieces of paper called money, which in reality means that you can exchange these pieces of paper for gold, and you can exchange the gold for the things that come out of and grow upon the land.

The stock broker may not like this chapter because the more speculation the more he benefits. He gets a rake-off every time a man buys and every time a man sells. He plays a sure thing. He is like the man with the Wienerwurst privilege.

Don't Speculate. Invest.

Elimination

One of the greatest brain savers is elimination. Every man should try to operate along lines of the least resistance, eliminate the deterrent influences and all things that fret him.

Do not look for trouble. Do not concern yourself too much over disagreeable things over which you have no control.

Do not build up an intricate system in your business. Have simplicity your ideal. Eliminate all useless moves. If you have disturbing influences in your institution, such as an employe who is continually causing friction, eliminate that employe. The man who causes friction is pulling back on the forward impulses of your business, and he is holding back one or more men who are trying to help you forward.

Get rid of useless things that take your time or cause you worry.

Remember that as you grow successful people will come to you under various excuses to get your aid financially or morally. They want you to go into new companies. The officers of the Club to which you belong will ask you to be a director. You will be invited to dinners, asked to speak, asked to do a thousand and one things, and in proportion as you accede to these demands you will find the demands increasing until finally you have little time to attend to your own affairs or to attend to your family.

Have as your center idea--elimination. Everything that takes your time from your business or your family is an extra tax on your strength.

Eliminate every habit that holds you back, every practice that unfits you for progress, every person who depresses you, every move that is not necessary, every footless idea that crowds your brain.

The Specialist

When this nation of ours was born nearly every one was a generalist.

The merchant sold a general line of merchandise. The doctor was also a farmer and a horse trader. In those days there were very few specialists.

As time passed some of the wiser individuals turned specialist and succeeded.

The doctor who is a generalist cannot excel in any one branch of medicine, or compete with the specialist who devotes all his time and study and practice towards one point and towards the treatment of a specific ailment. The merchant who sells everything cannot compete with the man who makes it his business to sell one class of goods. This is an age of specialists, and what we considered a specialist twenty-five years ago is only a generalist from the present standpoint. The specialist of twenty-five years ago has been divided again and again. The best doctor today is one who doctors the eye alone, the stomach alone, or the nerves alone. He can do more for you and knows more of your case in five minutes' observation than the generalist would in three months.

With the keen competition of these days it is necessary for the individual to be a specialist in business.

Pleasure and recreation are the only things in which an individual should be a generalist.

Were it not for specialists we should know little about the sun, little of electricity, little of steam, little of railroads, little of advertising, little of anything else. It is because individuals have made a speciality of one thing, because they have concentrated their energies and their brain power on one thing that the world has progressed.

Recreation is for relaxation, and the business man should see to it that he gets the full benefit of recreation. If he carries specialism into recreation, recreation is spoiled, for the moment a man is a specialist in recreation he strives to excel, and this striving to excel is hard work, and that is the same thing he is doing in business.