Some Good Advice
Better Business. (Cadbury, Bournville).
" THERE is nothing so revolutionary," wrote Matthew Arnold years ago, " because there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world by the very law of its creation is in eternal progress ; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that natural but most deadly error of human indolence and corruption that our business is to preserve and not to improve. This is the ruin of us all alike, individuals, schools and nations."
Businesses are no exception to this admirable plea for progress. As Mr. Casson says, too many of our firms are out of touch with the buying public. They should make changes in their marketing methods, and not sit still and blame the Government, or the Budget, or the stupidity of the public. As an antidote to that universal ready-made answer of the lazy, " What's the use ? " this vital little volume can be thoroughly recommended.
" The great need of the moment is to grapple with difficulties and discouragements. We have never before had so many of both." There is worry, for instance. Thin men worry most, and there is no sure cure for it, says Mr. Casson; however, making a list of one's troubles and then taking a pencil and striking out those that do not matter is a good plan. " The smaller a man is the bigger the noise he makes over a trifle." Lord Leverhulme at the head of his two hundred companies was always gay ; hundreds of small shopkeepers collapse with nervous prostration over the burden of pennies and halfpennies. Yet no man is a born failure. We have all some strain of ability which could make life a success. " In the last twenty generations every man has had 1,048,576 ancestors. He may master all his difficulties by drawing on the reserve power of his fifty-thousand-generation brain." Once, while waiting for a train- at Waterloo, Mr. Casson noticed a little old man who stood near him. His hands-hung limp and he had a general look of dejection about him. He was heard to mutter, The one great difficulty " The one great difficulty 1 All his life that poor little old man had been tackling some one great difficulty. The phrase had been the keynote of his days and the reason for his failure.
" Every great life that has helped and sanctified this earth has been a life that was built up of compulsions and obligations." We are all in the making, says Mr. Casson, like an ingot of red- hot iron going through the rolling mill. " The main thing is to be red hot all the time and keep going." The most highly skilled people are always learning. " I am going to my lesson,' said Karsavina to a- friend who happened to meet her. There is something for business men to think about. Karsavina going to a dancing lesson ! How few books are in the average office and how seldom they are looked at I "
It would give our readers a wrong impression of Getting Over Difficulties, however, were we merely to quote maxims which, however worthy, cannot claim to be original. There is more in Mr. Casson's book than that. The chapter on banks and banking consists of extremely well and pithily expressed advice on borrowing, and what the author says applies to a larger public than the small business man for whom he writes. The same may be said of some of his psycho-physiological excursions. " One of Nature's jokes," he says, " is that she makes every human body develop to its full size, while the growth, of the mind depends upon ourselves and our experiences. The fatigue of the body can be cured by sleep— by pleasure—by Charlie Chaplin—by George Robey—by a romp with children. But the fatigue of the mind is more serious. Nothing can cure it but a resurrection of the will, and how shall we raise the dead ? " Are there not thousands of us, perhaps millions, in this state ? Getting Over Difficulties should do what it claims for many men.
Messrs. Cadbury's enterprise in producing a beautifully illustrated brochure to help the small confectioner is to be commended. There is an excellent article on book-keeping and another on window-display. What we said above applies to this volume also. If we are not a nation of shop - keepers, at any rate we are, or should be, a nation of workers— and workers must sell their wares, whatever they may be.
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