The old nursery rhyme reads:—
“Multiplication is vexation,
Division is as bad,
The rule of three doth puzzle me,
And practice drives me mad.”
Many of the people who are trying to tell others how to manage their business seem to think that “multiplication is vexation,” and that the great big things accomplished by the hard-working men of the United States are wrong. They think that “division is as bad,” and that, when after earnest efforts business pays a return or a dividend, the ability to make a profit must be checked. They have lost all sense of proportion and the “rule of three” puzzles them badly, for they are unable to see how great this country is and what great instruments of commerce there must be. “Practice” would drive them mad, for very few of them have ever done any actual work in conducting affairs about which they so readily instruct others.
The individual citizen, having created the railroad, the corporation, the trust, the labor
