which others have made; only now and then there will be a new path blazer, a precedent breaker.

The fatal lack in our educational system is that the schools and the colleges do not train the young in constructive thinking; they are not taught the value of mental creation; they do not know how to make or how to carry out a program.

This is why the office boy so often turns out better than the college youth. The former is all the time learning to do things, to undertake things, thus he develops his initiative, while the student is absorbing knowledge, taking things into his mind, stilting his memory, and does not have practical experience in creating or producing, in actually doing things.

College boys who pay their way often turn out better in life, even when they rank lower in their studies, than others whose very way is paid for them. Take, for example, the boy who goes canvassing or selling goods during his vacation. He naturally develops his initiative more in a single summer than the boy whose expenses are paid for him does in a whole college course.

When a student is out selling things he finds he is facing a new proposition, a new world. He cannot go to his professor for assistance. He has to stand alone. He has to use his ingenuity and his brain, and his pride and vanity are aroused. He knows that if he fails he is going to be laughed at, humiliated, and he gradually develops the

power to do things, develops a positive mentality.

A weak initiative comes from weak, negative thinking. If children were only taught how to think constructively, how to develop a positive mentality, their initiative would naturally be vigorous and strong.

If I were president of a college the first thing I should do would be to establish an initiative chair, and I would place in it a professor who would train the students in the art of getting on in the world, who would teach them how to use their faculties, how to develop the qualities that win.

One professor in a college like James J. Hill, Marshall Field, or John Wanamaker could do marvelous good in the way of teaching students how they can succeed in life, showing them what a tremendous part initiative plays in the successful career, and how to develop it, teaching them the secret of achievement, the science of success.

To develop initiative you must learn to act, for initiative is vigorous action. You must learn to decide and to make your decision final. No man can develop initiative when he is continually wavering, reconsidering. You will find that if you acquire the habit of final and vigorous decision, never allowing yourself to take up matters for reconsideration which have once been disposed of, it will greatly develop your initiative and be a wonderful help to you.

I have in mind a friend in New York who has

tremendous ability. Every time I talk with him he convinces me that he is just about to do some great thing. His Websterian brain radiates conviction, and everybody who has known him has been waiting for many years for him to do some of the big things which his superb ability has promised. But there is one thing that is keeping him back; he doesn't dare to begin the things that everybody believes he could carry out; he somehow has a terror of launching out and committing himself unreservedly to his ambition. He believes he can do the things that he is ambitious to do, but he does not go at them. He lacks projectile power. If somebody would give him a push or something should happen to force him into action, everybody who knows him believes he would make a great success, but he can't seem to start. He is so afraid that something will happen—he might make a failure and he would be humiliated and mortified to have to back out.

When we analyze this man we find that the root of his trouble is lack of final decision. He will decide perhaps to-day to do a thing, he will resolve to begin it at once, and then he feels terrified at the responsibility; doubt rises in his mind and he begins to waver and reconsider, and then he is lost, until another wave of enthusiasm rushes through his brain and he determines again to launch out, but he does not, and now he is approaching an age when it is very doubtful whether he ever will

attempt to do what he has the ability to accomlish. Although he has been a great many years preparing for the launching of his life ship it is still in dry dock, and it may never see the ocean.

Emerson says: "The law of nature is, Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing have not the power." Initiative grows with use.

Fear is one of the worst enemies of initiative; it would paralyze even the initiative of a Columbus. Multitudes of people, if they could get rid of the chronic fear and worry which paralyzes their initiative, could do wonderful things. Anxiety, jealousy, morbid moods, over-sensitiveness, discouragement, despondency, blues, all these things tend to darken the initiative, so that we do not attempt many things we might carry out successfully. Mrs. Grundy has paralyzed the initiative of a vast multitude of people. We are so afraid that something might happen to our undertaking, it might not be successful, and then people would laugh at us or ridicule us.

We are not quite sure we have the ability to do what we long to do, and if we should not happen to be successful then people would say: "Well, I did not believe he could do it. He has not the ability."

I have known several men who have suffered from lack of confidence and fear of failure whenever they have attempted to act on their own ini

tiative, to get great benefit from self-encouragement through suggestion.

Self-assertion, the spirit of independence, the courage, the manhood which respects its own powers and is determined to rely upon them, and belief in one's self, the qualities which characterize a leader, can be cultivated by every human being.

Every man who has made his mark on the world has found his projectile power inside of him. There sleeps the giant powder which will project you to your goal. Do not look to others to push you, to give you a pull or use their influence. Your resources, your assets, are right inside of you; they are nowhere else.

The only help that young Woolworth, the founder of the five and ten cent stores throughout the country, got was three hundred dollars he borrowed to start in business with. When as a boy he asked his employer, a country storekeeper, to let him collect on a table all of the things that were sold for five and ten cents to see if he could not increase their sale by calling people's attention to them, he was finding expression for the giant powder pent up inside of him.

If you feel paralyzed by the very responsibility of deciding things, beginning things of your own accord, make up your mind that, if you ever are to amount to anything, you must strangle this fault. The way to do this is to start out every morning with the grim resolution not to allow yourself,