Side note: Seek the counsel of men who will tell you the truth about yourself, even if it hurts you to hear it. Mere commendation will not bring the improvement you need.
The successful lawyer is not necessarily the one who memorizes the greatest number of principles of law. On the contrary, the successful lawyer is the one who knows where to find a principle of law, plus a variety of opinions supporting that principle which fit the immediate needs of a given case.
In other words, the successful lawyer is he who knows where to find the law he wants when he needs it.
This principle applies, with equal force, to the affairs of industry and business.
Henry Ford had but little elementary schooling, yet he is one of the best “educated” men in the world because he has acquired the ability so to combine natural and economic laws, to say nothing of the minds of men, that he has the power to get anything of a material nature he wants.
Some years ago during the world war Mr. Ford brought suit against the Chicago Tribune, charging that newspaper with libelous publication of statements concerning him, one of which was the statement that Ford was an “ignoramus,” an ignorant pacifist, etc.
When the suit came up for trial the attorneys for the Tribune undertook to prove, by Ford himself, that their statement was true; that he was ignorant, and with this object in view they catechized and cross-examined him on all manner of subjects.
One question they asked was:
“How many soldiers did the British send over to subdue the rebellion in the Colonies in 1776?”
With a dry grin on his face Ford nonchalantly replied:
“I do not know just how many, but I have heard that it was a lot more than ever went back.”
Loud laughter from Court, jury, court-room spectators, and even from the frustrated lawyer who had asked the question.
This line of interrogation was continued for an hour or more, Ford keeping perfectly calm the meanwhile. Finally, however, he had permitted the “smart Aleck” lawyers to play with him until he was tired of it, and in reply to a question which was particularly obnoxious and insulting, Ford straightened himself up, pointed his finger at the questioning lawyer and replied:
“If I should really wish to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the others you have been asking, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons hanging over my desk and by placing my finger on the right button I could call in men who could give me the correct answer to all the questions you have asked and to many that you have not the intelligence either to ask or answer. Now, will you kindly tell me why I should bother about filling my mind with a lot of useless details in order to answer every fool question that anyone may ask, when I have able men all about me who can supply me with all the facts I want when I call for them?”
This answer is quoted from memory, but it substantially relates Ford’s answer.
There was silence in the court-room. The questioning attorney’s under jaw dropped down, his eyes opened widely; the judge leaned forward from the bench and gazed in Mr. Ford’s direction; many of the jury awoke and looked around as if they had heard an explosion (which they actually had).
A prominent clergyman who was present in the court-room at the time said, later, that the scene reminded him of that which must have existed when Jesus Christ was on trial before Pontius Pilate, just after He had given His famous reply to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”
In the vernacular of the day, Ford’s reply knocked the questioner cold.
Up to the time of that reply the lawyer had been enjoying considerable fun at what he believed to be Ford’s expense, by adroitly displaying his (the lawyer’s) sample case of general knowledge and comparing it with what he inferred to be Ford’s ignorance as to many events and subjects.
But that answer spoiled the lawyer’s fun!
It also proved once more (to all who had the intelligence to accept the proof) that true education means mind development; not merely the gathering and classifying of knowledge.
Ford could not, in all probability, have named the capitals of all the States of the United States, but he could have and in fact had gathered the “capital” with which to “turn many wheels” within every State in the Union.
Education—let us not forget this—consists of the power with which to get everything one needs when he needs it, without violating the rights of his fellow men. Ford comes well within that definition, and for the reason which the author has here tried to make plain, by relating the foregoing incident connected with the simple Ford philosophy.
There are many men of “learning” who could easily entangle Ford, theoretically, with a maze of questions none of which he, personally, could answer. But Ford could turn right around and wage a battle in industry or finance that would exterminate those same men, with all of their knowledge and all of their wisdom.
Ford could not go into his chemical laboratory and separate water into its component atoms of hydrogen and oxygen and then re-combine these atoms in their former order, but he knows how to surround himself with chemists who can do this for him if he wants it done. The man who can intelligently use the knowledge possessed by another is as much or more a man of education as the person who merely has the knowledge but does not know what to do with it.
The president of a well known college inherited a large tract of very poor land. This land had no timber of commercial value, no minerals or other valuable appurtenances, therefore it was nothing but a source of expense to him, for he had to pay taxes on it. The State built a highway through the land. An “uneducated” man who was driving his automobile over this road observed that this poor land was on top of a mountain which commanded a wonderful view for many miles in all directions. He (the ignorant one) also observed that the land was covered with a growth of small pines and other saplings. He bought fifty acres of the land for $10.00 an acre. Near the public highway he built a unique log house to which he attached a large dining room. Near the house he put in a gasoline filling station. He built a dozen single-room log houses along the road, these he rented out to tourists at $3.00 a night, each. The dining room, gasoline filling station and log houses brought him a net income of $15,000.00 the first year. The next year he extended his plan by adding fifty more log houses, of three rooms each, which he now rents out as summer country homes to people in a near-by city, at a rental of $150.00 each for the season.
The building material cost him nothing, for it grew on his land in abundance (that same land which the college president believed to be worthless).
Moreover, the unique and unusual appearance of the log bungalows served as an advertisement of the plan, whereas many would have considered it a real calamity had they been compelled to build out of such crude materials.
Less than five miles from the location of these log houses this same man purchased an old worked-out farm of 150 acres, for $25.00 an acre, a price which the seller believed to be extremely high.
By building a dam, one hundred feet in length, the purchaser of this old farm turned a stream of water into a lake that covered fifteen acres of the land, stocked the lake with fish, then sold the farm off in building lots to people who wanted summering places around the lake. The total profit realized from this simple transaction was more than $25,000.00, and the time required for its consummation was one summer.
Yet this man of vision and imagination was not “educated” in the orthodox meaning of that term.
Side note: When you lose your sense of humor, get a job running an elevator, because your life will be a series of UPS and DOWNS, anyway.
Let us keep in mind the fact that it is through these simple illustrations of the use of organized knowledge that one may become educated and powerful.
In speaking of the transaction here related, the college president who sold the fifty acres